THE    ROMANCE    OF 
NORTHUMBERLAND 


THE 

ROMANCE    OF 
NORTHUMBERLAND 


BY 

A.  G.  BRADLEY 

AUTHOR    OF 

"THE  MARCH  AwlT  BORDERLAND  OP  WALES," 
"HIGHWAYS  AND  BYWAYS  OF  THE  LAKE  COUNTRY,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


WITH    SIXTEEN    ILLUSTRATIONS    IN    COLOUR    BY 

FRANK  SOUTHGATE,   R.B.A. 

AND   TWELVE    OTHER    ILLUSTRATIONS 


CHICAGO 

A.    C.    McCLURG   &   CO. 

LONDON:    METHUEN    &    CO. 
1909 


PREFACE 

^I^HIS  volume  is  the  fruit  of  a  summer  and  autumn  in 
-*•  Northumberland,  and  of  many  pilgrimages  by  road  or 
moorland  through  its  more  interesting,  which,  I  may  add,  is 
its  greater,  part.  It  is  not  a  guide-book,  but  aspires  to 
engage  the  interest  of  what  is  known  as  the  armchair  reader, 
while  hoping  at  the  same  time  to  be  of  some  service  to  the 
brother  wanderer,  whether  stimulated  to  such  adventure  by  its 
contents  or  his  own  well-directed  inclinations.  It  is  a  curious 
reflection  that  a  county  whose  fame  one  might  almost  say  is 
lisped  by  every  well-to-do  child  in  the  English-speaking  world 
at  their  mother's  knees,  and  that  even  in  such  fragments 
suggests  a  background  worthy  of  the  oft-told  tales  of  Percy 
and  Douglas,  of  Marmion  and  Flodden  and  Chevy  Chase, 
of  moss-troopers  and  raiders,  should  have  scarcely  stirred  the 
interest  of  the  Mid  or  South  Saxon  traveller  one  whit.  For 
myself,  I  had  been  trying  to  get  there  all  my  life,  and  had 
been  much  all  round  it  without  succeeding.  Unlike  the 
fruition  of  many  cherished  objects  unduly  protracted,  I  was 
not  disappointed  ;  nor  did  I  expect  to  be.  Any  one  with  an 
elementary  knowledge  of  topography  could  see  what  North- 
umberland offered  in  a  physical  sense,  by  a  mere  glance  at 
the  map  of  the  county.  Six  or  seven  hundred  square  miles  of 
continuous  mountain  and  moorland,  exclusive  of  its  overlap 
into  Scotland,  will  confront  him  at  once,  and  he  will  find  the 


vi        THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

country  answer  to  the  map.  It  is  curious  that  in  view  of  the 
time-honoured  and  perennial  plaint  of  the  more  fastidious  that 
the  romantic  portions  of  England  are  over-run,  he  should 
never  have  discovered  that  this  is  an  hallucination  due  to  the 
fact  that,  like  most  other  people,  he  does  not  know  his  own 
country.  An  equally  striking  and  spacious  wilderness,  for 
that  matter,  varying  only  in  detail,  lies  also  hidden  from  the 
tourist  and  from  fugitive  literature  and  journalism,  in  South 
Wales,  but  that  is  not  celebrated  in  household  ballads  and 
familiar  tales,  and  belongs  rather  to  the  song  and  story  or 
the  Cymry. 

But  there  is  a  great  deal  more  in  Northumberland  than 
the  map  would  suggest,  much  of  which  will,  I  trust,  reveal 
itself  to  such  readers  as  may  bear  me  company  through  these 
pages.  But  to  do  justice  to  Northumberland  between  the 
covers  of  a  single  volume  is  not  easy.  To  borrow  a  rather 
happy  phrase  from  a  well-known  author,  I  would  call  this 
rather  an  "  Appreciation "  of  that  noble  county.  One  con- 
solation at  any  rate  is  mine :  for  with  all  the  valuable  his- 
torical, archaeological,  and  other  work  of  a  technical  kind  that 
has  been  done  on  Northumberland,  no  descriptive  book  of  the 
nature  of  this  one,  appealing  to  the  general  reader,  save  one 
or  two  of  purely  local  significance  and  circulation,  has  ever, 
so  far  as  I  know  and  can  learn,  been  published. 

A.  G.  B. 

RYE 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    I 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY  . I 

CHAPTER   II 

ALNWICK,   WARKWORTH  AND  THE  PERCIES 14 

CHAPTER   III 

EMBLETON   BAY 45 

CHAPTER   IV 
TO  CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM 69 

CHAPTER   V 
HAMBURGH  AND  HOLY  ISLAND •       95 

CHAPTER  VI 
BERWICK-ON-TWEED 12$ 

CHAPTER  VII 

NORHAM 148 

CHAPTER  VIII 

HEXHAM,   BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON 163 

CHAPTER    IX 

CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD 2OO 

CHAPTER  X 

THE   ROMAN  WALL 217 

vii 


viii      THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 
CHAPTER  XI 

PAGE 

ALLENDALE  .       %  , 350 

CHAPTER  XII 

NORTH  TYNEDALE 275 

CHAPTER  XIII 

REDESDALE  ...........      307 

CHAPTER   XIV 

COQUETDALE  TO  WOOLER         ...,.,, 330 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE   MUCKLE  CHEVIOT 358 

CHAPTER  XVI 

FLODDEN   FIELD 375 


INDEX 


395 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN   COLOUR 

NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE Frontispiece 

FACING    PAGE 

ALNWICK  CASTLE .  .          .          .17 

DUNSTANBURGH   CASTLE     .  .          ...  .    .      .          «          .        60 

BAM  BURGH  CASTLE .          .          .          -95 

HOLY   ISLAND 123 

BERWICK-ON-TWEED 12$ 

NORHAM  CASTLE 153 

HEXHAM 163 

ON  THE  ROMAN  WALL 224 

CRAG  LOUGH 247 

STAWARD   PELE 267 

ON  THE  ALLEN 272 

A  MOORLAND  STREAM "    .          .          .29! 

NEAR   KIELDER 302 

STORM   IN  THE  CHEVIOTS 351 

LANGLEEFORD 366 

IN   MONOTONE 

MAP   FROM   THE  DRAWING  BY  B.  C.  BOULTER  .  .        Front  Cover 

HULNE  ABBEY 32 

From  a  Photograph  by  Messrs.  J.  Valentine  &  Sons,  Ltd.,  Dundee 

ix 


x         THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

FACING   PAGE 

ALNWICK  CASTLE          .          .  ••-»          .          .          .    '      .          .36 

From  a  Photograph  by  Messrs.  J.  Valentine  &  Sons,  Ltd.,  Dundee 

BAMBURGH 112 

From  a  Photograph  by  Messrs.  /.  Valentine  &  Sons,  Ltd. ,  Dundee 

HEXHAM  ABBEY.          .          .      •  .-.  .-•    y    ;      .          .          .        ,,»$     *  .          -      177 
From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  /.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

DILSTON 189 

From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  J.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

AYDON   HALL 203 

From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  J.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

NORTH  TYNE  BELOW  CHESTERS 2l6 

From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  J.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

NORTH  TYNE  AT  WARDEN 2l8 

From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  J.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

PR^ETORIUM,   BORCOVICUS  (HOUSESTEADS) 236 

From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  J.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

ROMAN  WALL  AT  CUDDY'S  CRAG 241 

From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  J.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

LANGLEY  CASTLE 255 

From  a  Photograph  by  Mr.  J.  P.  Gibson,  Hexham 

ROTHBURY   BRIDGE 322 

From  a  Photograth  by  Messrs.  J.  Valentine  &  Sons,  Ltd.,  Dundee 


THE    ROMANCE    OF 
NORTHUMBERLAND 


CHAPTER   I 
INTRODUCTORY 

ALMOST  every  Southron  who  enters  Northumberland 
does  so  by  way  of  the  lofty  bridge  at  Newcastle,  which 
carries  the  North  Eastern  railway  across  the  Tyne.  It  is 
needless  to  add  that  not  one  probably  in  a  thousand  of  such 
pilgrims  by  the  Scotch  express  who  get  this  passing  glimpse  of 
one  of  the  most  imposing  spectacles  in  industrial  Britain  has 
any  thought  of  the  county  of  Northumberland  in  his  mind.  No 
Southerners  to  speak  of  ever  contemplate  it  as  the  scene  of  a 
holiday,  and  the  experience  of  a  summer  and  autumn  spent  in 
various  portions  of  its  delectable  highlands  and  striking  sea- 
coast  enables  me  to  say  this  much  with  tolerable  confidence. 
For  one  thing,  a  somewhat  similar  delusion  is,  I  fancy,  abroad 
as  attaches  to  South  Wales,  namely,  that,  like  that  other 
delightful  and  inspiring  country,  Northumberland  mainly 
consists  of  coal  mines,  which  is  the  more  singular,  as  these  very 
regions  actually  contain  the  two  most  extensive  and  unbroken 
areas  of  virgin  wilderness  south  of  the  western  Highlands. 
Now,  Durham  is  in  very  truth  deplorably  besmirched,  though 
at  the  head  of  the  Tees  and  Wear  it  still  retains  some  noble 
heathclad  solitudes.  But  when  Durham  joins  Northumber- 
land where  Gateshead,  Jarrow,  and  South  Shields  look  across 

B  I 


2         THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

the  deep  and  narrow  Tyne  to  Newcastle  and  its  tributary 
towns,  there  is  an  industrial  orgie  indeed,  not  merely  of  coal, 
but  of  the  innumerable  enterprises  its  presence  stimulates, 
and  all  of  the  most  resounding  kind.  You  have  not  only 
here  the  energy  of  the  North,  but  of  a  North  that  faces  the 
rasping  breezes  of  the  German  Ocean,  and  is  thereby 
encouraged,  no  doubt,  to  that  process  of  selection  known  as 
the  survival  of  the  fittest. 

From  the  lofty  bridge  over  which  his  train  makes  cautious 
way,  the  Briton's  heart  should  glow  as  his  eye  rests  on  the 
deep  murky  river,  crowded  with  shipping,  and  its  sloping 
shores  densely  packed  with  the  joyless  marts  of  commerce 
and  the  belching  chimneys  of  industry.  Yet  this,  after  all, 
gives  but  a  faint  idea  of  the  energy  of  Newcastle  compared 
with  the  spectacle  unfolded  to  any  enterprising  soul  who  has 
a  mind  to  board  one  of  the  many  little  steamers  that  ply 
hence  down  the  river  to  Tynemouth.  It  is  only  a  six  or  eight 
mile  voyage,  but,  from  the  frequent  stoppages  on  either  side, 
takes  nearly  two  hours  in  the  accomplishment.  The  Tyne  is 
deep  and  comparatively  narrow,  a  mere  hundred  yards  or  so 
in  width  by  the  city.  Though  broadening  gradually,  it  never 
spreads  into  a  serious  estuary,  but  remains  in  effect  a  river  till 
it  races  out  into  the  open  sea  beneath  the  ruins  of  Tynemouth 
Abbey  between  yellow  sands  and  once  again  under  clear 
skies.  But  in  the  mean  time  the  ear  will  have  been  con- 
tinuously assailed  by  the  deafening  clangour  of  shipyards,  and 
the  eye  confused  by  miles  of  aerial  scaffolding  and  the 
hulks  of  huge  vessels  in  all  shapes  and  stages  of  construction 
enclosed  therein  ;  of  busy,  murky  collieries,  with  their  dingy 
wharves  and  fleets  of  lighters  ;  of  ocean  craft  of  every  size 
and  every  nation  on  the  water,  some  battered  by  a  thousand 
storms,  some  that  have  never  yet  touched  the  open  sea  and 
are  still  in  the  hands  of  carpenters  and  painters. 

But  I  have  no  concern  here  with  these  smoky  scenes  of 
turmoil,  nor  with  the  aspect  of  Newcastle,  residential  or 
industrial.  Hidden  away  in  corners  among  all  this  rampant 
modernity  are  little  fragments  of  masonry  that  still  speak  of 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

the  ancient  life  of  the  city.  So  there  are,  no  doubt,  in 
Manchester  and  Liverpool  and  Birmingham.  But  none  of 
these  places  had  a  tithe  of  the  strategetic  importance  in  olden 
days  that  can  be  boasted  of  by  their  busy  rival  in  the  north. 
One  solitary  and  conspicuous  relic  of  feudal  times  even  yet 
survives  in  the  very  heart  and  front  of  Newcastle.  For  the 
fortress,  partially  restored  to  be  sure,  which  William  Rufus 
raised  here  upon  the  Tyne — the  actual  germ,  in  short,  from 
which  the  city  grew — still  lifts  its  smoke-grimed  battlements 
amid  the  roar  of  street  and  railroad  traffic.  Dwarfed  and 
mocked  by  the  overpowering  erections  of  modern  commerce, 
and,  indeed,  itself  of  no  great  dimensions  for  its  character, 
a  more  pathetically  situated  remnant  of  Norman  chivalry 
I  never  beheld.  One  finds  mediaeval  castles  in  queer  com- 
pany often  enough,  but  I  know  of  none  so  entirely  over- 
whelmed by  rampant  modernity  as  this  besmirched  but  proud 
and  massive  little  keep.  Once  actually  advertised  as  a 
mill  site  ;  later  on  nearly  converted  into  a  railway  signal-box ; 
such  honour  as  may  yet  be  possible  is  now  paid  to  it,  for  its 
ancient  chambers  are  in  the  secure  and  loving  occupation  of 
the  Northumberland  Society  of  Antiquaries,  which  is  well. 
The  river  beneath,  save  in  the  manner  and  burden  of  its 
craft,  has  altered  nothing  since  those  walls  were  raised.  For 
the  Tyne  is  not  as  most  rivers  that  bear  the  navies  of  great 
seaports.  A  dozen  or  fifteen  miles  up  it  is  playing  among 
rocks  and  broad  gravelly  shallows,  where  trout  and  samlets 
still  sport  in  clear  mountain  water.  And  later  on,  when  we 
see  the  nature  and  the  size  of  the  country  that  it  drains,  it 
will  be  easy  to  imagine  how  sudden  and  how  formidable  are 
the  floods  that  rush  beneath  these  bridges  and  betimes  cover 
the  lower  floors  and  fill  the  cellars  of  the  riverside  tenements. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  another  relic  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
a  stone  bridge  laden  with  dwelling-houses  after  the  curious 
habit  of  our  ancestors,  disappeared  one  stormy  night,  with  all 
its  human  freight,  in  a  few  seconds  before  the  fury  of  the 
peaty  waters,  gathered  as  they  are  from  a  hundred  mountains, 
glens,  and  valleys. 


4         THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

I  am  persuaded  that  no  reader  will  expect  to  be  told  here 
the  long  story  of  Newcastle,  which,  as  a  matter  of  course,  is 
intimately  associated  with  that  of  the  county.  Though 
enough  and  to  spare,  perhaps,  of  the  latter  will  crop  as  we 
ascend  the  vales  or  linger  by  its  becastled  seashores,  the 
bustling  thoroughfares  of  Grey  or  Grainger  Street  are  not 
inspiring  for  such  a  theme.  Yet  no  capital  of  a  county  was 
ever  more  of  a  capital,  few,  perhaps,  so  much  as  Newcastle 
has  been  since  measurable  time  to  Northumberland,  set 
though  it  be  in  its  extreme  south-eastern  corner.  For  there 
is  nothing  else  within  its  borders  remotely  approaching  the 
Tyneside  city,  only  a  few  old  country  towns  famous  in 
history  and  in  tales  of  derring-do,  but  otherwise  mere  marts 
of  rural  commerce.  What  influence  the  wealth  of  Newcastle 
has  had  on  such  a  province  needs  no  telling.  Yet  the  city 
is  essentially  Northumbrian,  or,  having  regard  to  the  geo- 
graphical partnership  of  Durham,  essentially  provincial ;  much 
more  so,  I  should  say,  than  Liverpool,  Manchester,  or  Bristol. 
In  blood  and  character  and  dialect  it  has  less  alien  alloy,  I 
imagine,  than  any  great  English  seaport  and  industrial  centre. 
But  this  is  only  an  impression  ;  I  did  not  intend  to  do  more 
than  make  a  start  from  Newcastle,  though,  having  said  these 
few  words  about  its  busy  and  more  unlovely  aspect,  I  must 
in  justice  to  its  public  spirit  say  one  more  in  praise  of  the 
fine  parks  and  breathing  spaces  that  it  has  secured  and 
beautified  for  the  benefit  of  its  working  classes.  It  is  a  quite 
admirable  city  to  get  out  of  too.  In  half  an  hour  and  for  a 
few  pence  to  an  electric  railway  the  working  man  can  disport 
himself  in  the  fresh  waters  of  the  North  Sea,  which  lash  the 
rocky  coves  and  sandy  shores  of  Tynemouth.  In  an  hour  or 
two  his  employer  may  be  by  a  salmon  pool  in  the  romantic 
gorges  of  the  North  Tyne  or  the  Coquet,  or  on  a  grouse 
moor  above  Hexham,  or  golfing  among  the  dunes  that  line 
so  much  of  the  Northumberland  coast.  Though  a  Roman 
station  existed  here,  since  it  was  the  eastern  extremity  of 
Hadrian's  famous  wall,  followed  by  a  Saxon  settlement  of 
some  kind,  William  Rufus,  with  his  enduring  castle,  was  the 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

actual  founder  of  the  town.  After  many  vicissitudes  of 
ownership,  in  which  Scotland  was  much  concerned,  Northum- 
berland became  an  integral  part  of  England,  with  Newcastle 
as  its  capital,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Second,  and  its 
frequent  military  base  in  those  centuries  of  Border  warfare 
which  ensued.  Girt  about  with  walls  now  vanished,  it  sus- 
tained a  siege  on  behalf  of  the  Crown  in  the  civil  war  against 
the  Scots  at  great  odds,  and  was  at  last  carried  by  assault. 
Charles  the  First,  as  everybody  knows,  was  here  for  a  long 
time  before  he  passed  over  to  the  Scots,  while  lastly,  in  the 
'45,  it  was  a  chief  base  of  operations  against  the  Jacobites, 
only  failing  to  save  the  capture  of  Carlisle  for  want  of  road 
facilities.  The  question  of  coal,  too,  touches  everybody. 
Shipbuilding  and  the  manufacture  of  guns  are  remote  techni- 
calities to  most  of  us.  We  all  must  feel  some  interest  in  the 
history  of  coal  as  an  item  in  the  household  bill.  Newcastle, 
of  course,  is  a  name  synonymous  with  any  curiosity  we  may 
feel  on  the  subject,  and  waiving  all  speculation  on  the  amount 
extracted  by  the  Romans  and  Saxons  for  local  use,  it  is 
interesting  to  note  that  the  first  charter  granting  the  burghers 
of  Newcastle  liberty  to  dig  for  coal  in  the  castle  field  without 
the  walls  was  made  in  1238  at  their  urgent  request  by  Henry 
the  Third,  followed  soon  after  by  much  more  liberal  con- 
cessions. This  was  the  beginning  of  the  coal  trade,  and  the 
domestic  use  of  that  invaluable  mineral  in  other  parts  of  the 
country.  Soon  afterwards  some  of  the  Durham  folk  received 
similar  privileges,  but  they  had  to  carry  their  stuff  across  the 
Tyne  to  Newcastle  and  pay  the  licence  exacted  there.  By 
the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  a  great  deal  of  coal  was 
being  shipped  to  London,  so  much  that  in  1305  it  was 
temporarily  suppressed  there  for  the  smoke  it  made.  It  was 
used  regularly,  we  are  told,  in  the  Royal  palaces,  and  the 
general  interdict  was  only  temporary,  for  in  1325  the  coal 
export  to  London  had  increased,  and  the  first  licence  to 
export  it  from  the  Tyne  to  foreign  countries  was  granted. 
It  was  not,  however,  till  1384  that  the  Bishop  of  Durham's 
subjects  were  allowed  to  mine  freely,  and  then  the  concession 


6         THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

was  granted  by  Richard  the  Third,  not  apparently  for  love  of 
them  or  their  bishop,  but  for  his  respect  for  the  memory  of 
St  Cuthbert,  which  seems  singular  unpractical  and  foolish. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  coals  were  sold  in  London  at  4^. 
a  chaldron,  but  the  price  fluctuated  violently.  The  shrewd 
business  eye  of  the  great  Elizabeth  seized  at  once  on  the 
opportunity  offered  by  the  Northern  coal  mines  to  an  enter- 
prising and  acquisitive  monarch.  She  "  obtained  "  a  lease 
of  all  the  Durham  fields  for  £90  a  year,  and  then  proceeded 
to  manipulate  a  corner  in  coals  with  much  success.  She 
annexed  the  private  pits  of  the  Percies  which  they  were 
profitably  developing  themselves,  and  only  consented  after  a 
time  to  allow  them  a  small  percentage  on  their  own  stuff. 
She  chartered  a  company  in  Newcastle  as  virtual  monopolists 
in  the  sale  of  Northumbrian  coal  to  shippers,  and  so  engineered 
matters  that  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  formally  complained 
that  the  Newcastle  freemen's  rights  had  been  bartered  away 
to  a  monopoly  and  begged  for  some  limitation  to  the  price, 
which  had  now  been  forced  up  to  a  pound  a  chaldron.  In 
the  next  reign  these  greedy  monopolists  began  to  mix  trash 
coal  and  slate  with  their  consignments.  But  no  longer  in 
quasi  partnership  with  royalty,  the  offenders  were  dragged 
before  the  Star  Chamber,  and  not  merely  heavily  fined  but 
imprisoned.  To  Charles  the  First  this  source  of  wealth 
offered  glittering  possibilities,  and  he  clapped  the  huge  duty 
of  5-f.  a  chaldron  on  all  coal  exported  abroad.  He  also 
renewed  the  monopolies  which  had  abated  for  substantial 
considerations,  so  that  in  his  son's  time  the  price  had  been 
forced  up  again  to  a  pound,  and  the  London  shipments  began 
once  more  to  be  full  of  slate  and  rubbish,  the  former  penalties 
of  fine  and  imprisonment  being  repeated.  After  the  great 
fire,  a  temporary  import  duty  of  $s.  was  put  on  in  London  as 
an  assistance  towards  the  building  of  churches.  Soon  after- 
wards Charles  granted  to  the  Duke  of  Rutland  is.  duty  on 
all  coals  landed  in  London,  which  was  only  purchased  from 
his  heirs  by  the  Government  in  1800.  This  monstrous  piece 
of  favouritism,  as  it  seems  to  us,  was  the  origin  of  the  shilling 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

tax  with  which  modern  Londoners  are  sufficiently  familiar. 
In  the  Stuart  period  Newcastle  had  10,000  men  employed  in 
the  mines,  keels,  and  lighters  connected  with  the  coal  trade, 
and  a  century  later  she  was  exporting  a  million  tons  a  year. 
Everybody  knows  the  ancient  ditty  of  "  Weel  may  the  keel 
row."  As  some  Scottish  collectors  have  had  the  hardihood 
to  include  it  among  their  national  airs,  it  is  more  than 
probable  that  to  many  Southerners  the  song  suggests  some 
pretty  fancy  of  a  Leith  mariner  breasting  the  blue  waves  of 
the  North  Sea  or  the  Firth  of  Forth.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
is  a  very  old  Newcastle  air,  and  the  keel,  a  local  coal  barge, 
which  has  been  used  from  earliest  times  to  convey  the  coal 
from  waggons  to  the  vessel,  the  word  being,  I  believe,  the 
old  Saxon  equivalent  for  ship  or  boat.  The  keelmen  of 
Newcastle  were  a  distinct  body  of  men,  and  their  boats  were 
constructed  to  measure,  like  the  waggons,  for  the  convenience 
of  the  Customs  and  the  trade  generally. 

Some  counties  enjoy  a  peculiar  distinction  of  shape, 
wrought  thus  by  the  trend  of  sea-coast  or  mountain  ranges, 
and  their  form  rises  involuntarily  to  the  mind  at  the  bare 
mention  of  their  names.  Northumberland,  to  me  at  least, 
has  always  been  such  a  county ;  in  rough  image  a  right- 
angled  triangle,  with  a  short  base  formed  by  the  Tyne,  a  long 
upright  facing  the  North  Sea,  with  a  third  and  yet  longer 
side  shaded  thick  with  continuous  moors  and  mountains. 
This  is  not  accurate,  of  course,  but  it  is  a  good  enough  impres- 
sion for  general  purposes.  Thus,  at  any  rate,  it  struts  upon 
the  map,  a  worthy  unit  of  that  defiant  gamecock-looking  frag- 
ment of  the  world,  the  island  of  Britain  ;  its  head  thrust 
aggressively  up  the  coast  of  its  old  enemy  and  crowned  with 
the  hoary  walls  of  Berwick  ;  its  foot  upon  the  coal  fields  and 
shipyards  of  Newcastle,  the  main  seat  and  source  of  its 
power  in  modern  times.  Of  all  English  counties,  too,  surely 
Northumberland  is  most  nobly  and  sonorously  named.  It 
may  fairly  rank  in  this  particular  with  Glamorgan,  as  it  rivals 
her  in  subterranean  wealth  and  in  the  magnificent  remains  of 
feudal  and  border  warfare. 


But  from  the  point  of  view  of  us  summer  idlers,  Northum- 
berland has  been  much  more  fortunate  than  Glamorgan. 
While  the  most  beautiful  portions  of  the  latter  have  been  in 
a  great  measure  besmirched  by  the  fumes  of  colliery  and 
furnace,  mining  activity  in  Northumberland  has  been  confined, 
as  regards  any  serious  landscape  blemish,  to  the  south-east 
corner  of  the  county  around  Newcastle,  the  very  quarter,  too, 
which  could  best  be  spared,  and  in  the  matter  of  physical 
graces  had  least  to  spoil. 

Though  of  infinitely  varied  surface,  Northumbria  is  a  pro- 
vince that  very  quickly  reveals  the  secrets  of  its  general 
scheme  of  physical  arrangement  to  the  inquiring  eye,  for  it  is 
a  country  almost  everywhere  of  spacious  outlooks  abounding 
in  vantage  points  that  command  magnificent  distances  ;  of 
conspicuous  landmarks  in  the  nature  of  familiar  and  dis- 
tinguished heights  ;  of  unmistakable  boundaries  washed  by 
the  ocean,  by  broad  rushing  rivers,  or  guarded  by  dark 
brooding  hills.  A  fertile  and  comparatively  level  strip  lines 
the  sea-coast  from  Newcastle  to  Berwick,  seldom  exceeding  a 
dozen  miles  in  width  and  generally  much  less.  Within  is  a 
much  wider  region  of  hill  and  dale,  where  the  wild  and 
domestic,  parkland  and  grouse  moor,  forest,  grainfield,  and 
lonely  crag-strewn  sheep  pasture  are  fortuitously  and  delight- 
fully mingled.  Behind  this  again,  springing  almost  from  the 
banks  of  Tweed,  the  Cheviots  roll  south-westward  and, 
merging  later  with  the  Tynedale  moorlands,  form  the  vast 
and  solitary  Northumbrian  Highlands,  the  very  heart  of  that 
Borderland  so  renowned  in  story,  but  so  little  known.  Hence 
issue  diverse  streams,  which,  forcing  their  way  through  the 
central  uplands  of  the  county,  fall  eventually  into  the  North 
Sea.  Of  these  Coquet  is  the  most  central  and  the  most 
distinguished.  Just  to  the  north  of  it  is  the  Aln,  and  some 
way  to  the  south  the  Wansbeck.  One  stream  only  of  note 
flows  northward  to  the  Tweed,  namely,  the  "  sullen  Till,"  whose 
fame  is  somewhat  more  than  local  for  the  part  it  played  in 
Flodden  field. 

A  majority,  no  doubt,  of  my  southern  readers  will  be  more 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

or  less  familiar  with  that  smooth  and  speedy  run  of  sixty 
miles  which  the  fast  trains  of  the  North  Eastern  Railway 
achieve  between  Newcastle  and  Berwick.  What  impressions 
of  Northumberland  remain  from  such  experiences  I  may  not 
even  guess,  but  might  reasonably  assert  that  they  are  not  of 
a  kind  to  arouse  the  enthusiasm  of  an  indifferent  traveller. 
I  remember  my  own  in  the  days  of  my  youth  very  well ;  how, 
when  domiciled  for  the  time  just  across  the  Scottish  border, 
I  could  make  very  little  of  picturesque  Northumberland, 
though  with  an  eye  somewhat  alert  for  it  as  I  pursued  my 
occasional  journeys  north  or  south.  Of  agriculture,  to  those 
concerned  with  it,  there  was  then  a  fine  display,  but  now  the 
widespreading  slopes  and  levels  of  this  eastern  strip  are 
mainly  set  to  grass.  But  there  are  suggestive  and  striking 
glimpses,  nevertheless,  even  from  the  railroad.  Here  for  a 
space  the  higher  Cheviots  lie  piled  against  the  western 
skyline.  There  the  sea-coast  opens  with  the  high  perched 
fortresses  of  Holy  Island  on  the  horizon,  or  Bamburgh 
looming  nearer  with  incomparable  sternness  between  sea  and 
shore.  There  is  a  delightful  glimpse  of  Alnmouth,  cluster- 
ing red  above  a  sandy  shore,  with  the  little  Aln  twisting 
through  verdant  meadows  to  its  junction  with  the  sea ;  of  the 
Coquet  too,  for  just  a  moment  breathing  of  other  and  sterner 
scenes,  as  it  furrows  its  bright  way  seaward,  far  beneath  us 
through  a  maze  of  woods,  and  of  Warkworth  rising  in  grey 
ruin  above  its  banks.  But  I  will  ask  the  reader  to  suppose 
that  he  and  I  have  been  gliding  smoothly  northward  on  a 
local  train  at  the  tail  of  a  Scotch  express  over  the  South 
Eastern  levels  of  Northumberland ;  have  passed  Morpeth 
and  the  Wansbeck,  and,  leaving  behind  us  that  corner  block 
of  the  county  which  contains  most  of  the  uninteresting  and 
the  unclean  from  our  point  of  view,  leap  the  rushing  Coquet, 
and  draw  within  sight  one  after  the  other  of  the  great  twin 
Percy  strongholds  of  Warkworth  and  Alnwick.  Here,  in  the 
very  heart  of  Northumberland,  and  at  the  very  fount  of  North- 
umbrian power  through  the  Middle  Ages,  in  sight  too  of  the 
sea  and  of  the  plain,  of  the  central  moorlands  and  the  distant 


10       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Cheviots,  it  will  be  fitting  to  say  some  few  preliminary  words 
concerning  the  early  story  of  the  county  that  may  be  worthy 
of  remembrance  when  traversing  it  later. 

Northumberland,  from  the  Roman  to  the  Stuart  period, 
was  always  Borderland,  and  prolific  of  all  those  robust 
characteristics  inevitable  to  the  situation.  The  great  Roman 
wall  ran  through  it,  along  which  clustered  the  densest  popu- 
lation in  Roman  Britain,  and  where  the  hardest  fighting  was 
continually  going  forward  in  its  defence  against  the  valiant 
barbarians  to  the  northward.  On  the  Saxon  invasion,  arrivals 
from  Sleswig  settled  in  groups  along  these  Northumbrian 
shores  and  up  the  Tweed,  to  unite  in  time  their  scattered 
bands  under  a  single  chieftian,  Ida,  known  to  the  harried 
Britons  by  the  significant  title  of  the  "  Flamebearer."  From 
the  fortified  rock  of  Bamburgh,  to  which  these  details  more 
rightly  belong  than  to  Alnwick,  Ida  ruled  over  the  region 
lying  between  the  Forth  and  Tees  known  as  Bernicia,  while 
a  rival  prince  held  sway  over  Deira  or  modern  Yorkshire. 
This  could  not  last,  and  the  inevitable  struggle  for  mastery 
resulted  in  the  fusion  of  both  into  the  great  Saxon  kingdom 
of  Northumbria.  Christianity  came  there  by  means  of  one 
of  the  early  kings,  Oswald  to  wit,  who  had  been  domiciled 
for  some  time  among  the  monks  of  lona.  At  this  moment, 
635  A.D.,  the  New  Northumbria  was  being  sorely  pressed  and 
harried  by  the  Welsh,  and  when  the  armies  met  near  Hexham 
in  what  promised  to  be  a  decisive  conflict,  the  Christian  king 
promised  his  still  unregenerate  soldiers  certain  victory  if  they 
would  undertake  to  embrace  his  faith.  This  they  readily  did, 
clustering  round  a  wooden  cross  which  was  hastily  erected, 
and  then  immediately  proceeded  to  win  the  battle  over 
their  adversaries,  though  these  last  must  have  been  mainly 
Christians  of  long  habit. 

But  the  vow  of  the  Northumbrians  proved  more  difficult 
in  the  fulfilment  than  in  the  promise  thus  extracted  under 
fear  of  defeat.  Oswald's  missionaries  whom  he  imported 
from  lona  went  back  in  despair,  and  as  a  last  resource 
despatched  the  gentle  and  persuasive  St.  Aidan  to  try  his 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

hand  on  these  barbarous  colonists.  The  experiment  proved 
entirely  successful.  St.  Aidan  settled  at  Lindisferne  or  Holy 
Island  as  first  Bishop  of  Northumbria,  and  by  degrees  turned 
its  entire  population  to  the  Cross.  But  the  Christianity  of 
Northumbria  sprang  from  the  Celtic  Church,  and  its  different 
observances  soon  created  religious  friction  with  the  Saxons 
of  the  south,  who  had  received  their  creed  from  Rome.  In 
664,  however,  the  northerners  gave  way  peaceably,  and 
reaped  their  reward  of  a  union  with  the  Latin  Church  by  an 
immense  access  of  material  prosperity  consequent  on  the 
building  of  handsome  stone  churches  and  monasteries  along 
the  coast,  and  the  reclamation  of  wild  land.  Two  illustrious 
saints  and  bishops,  St.  Cuthbert,  to  whom  Durham  in  after 
days  was  dedicated,  and  St.  Wilfrid,  the  founder  of  Hexham, 
stand  out  in  this  period  above  any  of  the  kings  that  succeeded 
one  another  to  the  throne  of  the  powerful  and  generally 
progressive  kingdom.  The  venerable  Bede,  too,  was  born 
at  Wearmouth,  and  died  in  harness  at  Jarrow  on  the  Tyne 
in  the  eighth  century.  But  with  the  beginning  of  the  next 
and  the  coming  of  the  Norsemen,  the  kingdom  of  Northum- 
bria, though  waxing  in  arts  and  luxury,  had  waned  in  vigour, 
and  had  already  yielded  allegiance  to  the  west  Saxon  kings. 
Political  dissensions  and  ecclesiastical  laxity  made  it  a  com- 
paratively easy  prey  to  the  heathen  invaders,  who,  having 
harried  it  again  and  again,  finally  settled  in  modern  York- 
shire, leaving  the  old  Bernicia  from  the  Tyne  to  the  Forth 
in  the  hands  of  its  people  under  leaders  tributary  to  them- 
selves. It  is  worthy  of  note,  however,  that  no  Danes  are 
thought  then  or  ever  to  have  settled  in  this  northern  half  of 
old  Northumbria,  and  that  the  men  of  modern  Northumber- 
land, Berwickshire,  and  East  Lothian  are  held  to-day  as  of 
purer  English  stock  than  any  other  in  these  islands.  The  long 
and  complicated  struggle  for  mastery  between  Saxon  and 
Dane  in  all  parts  of  England  resulted  in  924  in  the  suzerainty 
of  the  west  Saxon,  King  Edward,  over  the  turbulent  people 
of  all  Northumbria,  which  then  appeared  to  have  been 
definitely  divided  into  English,  Danish,  and  Norwegian 


12   THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

territory.  The  rapid  succession  and  the  violent  ends  of  their 
many  Reguli  form  a  sanguinary  and  protracted  record.  It 
is  enough  here  that  the  now  degenerate  kingship  of  North- 
umbria  was  abolished  in  954,  and  converted  into  an  earldom, 
the  holders  being  practically  the  viceroys  of  the  English 
kings.  But  this  in  no  way  made  for  peace  or  order,  and 
Northumberland  was  the  scene  of  frequent  conflicts  between 
the  English  and  the  Danes  or  Scots,  Lothian  being  about 
the  year  1000  detached  and  handed  over  by  agreement  to 
the  Scottish  king.  These  transfers  of  provinces  to  this  or 
that  overlord  must  not,  of  course,  be  taken  in  quite  the  serious 
modern  sense.  The  people  of  the  coast-belt  between  Tyne 
and  Forth  were  at  any  rate  themselves  homogeneous,  and  one 
can  turn  with  relief  from  the  complicated  turmoil  that  distin- 
guished Northumberland  during  its  earldom  period  before  the 
Norman  conquest  to  the  arrival  of  the  Norman  Conqueror. 

William  went  slowly  with  his  most  distant  province,  and 
left  it  for  a  time  under  native  rulers  tributary  to  himself. 
Encouraged  by  a  Danish  fleet,  however,  the  Northumbrians 
turned  on  William,  and  even  seized  York.  The  Norman, 
after  his  thorough  method,  not  only  overthrew  the  revolting 
earls,  but  so  devastated  Northumberland  that  for  nine  years 
it  had  scarcely  any  animate  existence,  and  provided  one  of 
those  epochs  so  disconcerting  to  theories  of  racial  continuity. 
Malcolm  of  Scotland,  who  then  owned  Cumberland,  a  very 
thorn  in  the  side  of  the  Northern  English,  also  defied  the 
Conqueror,  after  having  acknowledged  his  overlordship  by 
proxy.  So  the  latter  swept  Scotland  to  the  Tay,  and  made 
its  warlike  king  swear  allegiance  in  person  and  on  his  knees. 
This  amounted  to  very  little.  The  earls  were  out  again  on 
the  warpath,  both  with  one  another  and  against  William 
Rufus,  who,  having  captured  Bamburgh,  the  old  seat  of 
Northumbrian  government  or  misgovernment,  abolished  its 
earldom,  which  had  now  lasted  nearly  a  century  and  a 
half,  and  vested  it  in  the  Crown.  Fighting,  however,  went 
merrily  and  steadily  on,  till  Stephen,  in  his  usual  straits, 
granted  the  earldom  to  the  son  of  the  Scottish  king,  who 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

already  held  Cumberland  by  a  now  traditional  custom.  But 
Henry  the  Second  soon  upset  this  arrangement,  restored 
Northumberland,  now  long  bounded  by  the  Tweed,  to  the 
English  Crown,  and  made  it  definitely  that  integral  portion 
of  England  it  has  ever  since  remained. 

More  than  ever,  if  possible,  it  now  became  the  buffer 
State  against  the  ceaseless  aggressions  of  the  Scots.  These 
grew  much  worse,  and  assumed  a  more  definitely  international 
character  after  those  attempts  of  Edward  the  First  to  annex 
Scotland,  which  were  only  thwarted  by  his  death.  War  and 
rapine  public  and  private  became  a  normal  feature  of 
Northumbrian  life  till  the  union  of  the  Crown  in  1600,  while 
for  a  century  later  the  remote  dalesmen,  with  their  neigh- 
bours over  the  Border,  still  observed  towards  one  another  a 
mediaeval  code  in  the  matter  of  meum  et  tuum,  and  in  their 
standards  of  manly  virtue.  Northumberland  shows  its  stormy 
past  all  over  its  surface.  There  is  much  that  is  ancient,  but 
almost  every  bit  of  this,  whether  entire  or  fragmentary, 
breathes  of  bygone  war.  There  is  no  cheerful  and  sunny 
old  age  in  cottage,  farm-house,  or  hall,  or  scarcely  any,  such 
as  one  is  accustomed  to,  in  most  parts  of  England.  Almost 
everything  not  obviously  martial  in  conception  is  common- 
place, substantial,  and  of  comparatively  recent  date,  and  looks 
more  so  from  the  massive  nature  of  the  Northumbrian 
masonry.  Indeed,  you  must  not  approach  the  county  in  the 
frame  of  mind  you  would  approach  Devonshire  or  shires  with 
a  comparatively  bloodless  past,  or  even  the  Welsh  border, 
whose  stormy  period  ended  more  than  two  centuries  earlier, 
and  left  abundant  space  for  bowery  villages  and  halls  to  age 
and  mellow  besides  the  ruins  of  the  mediaeval  fortress.  This 
North  East  is  splendid,  but  it  is  hard,  as  in  some  respects 
are  its  people.  It  is  spacious  and  breezy,  upland  and  lowland 
alike ;  eminently  romantic  too,  but  its  romance  is  of  a 
robust  kind,  if  the  seeming  paradox  be  admissible.  It  is  or 
was  poetic,  but  its  minstrels  sang  in  a  moving  fashion  of 
their  own  of  war  and  fire  and  foray  much  more  than  they 
sang  of  love  or  flowers,  of  song  birds  or  waterfalls,  though 
these  softer  joys  were  present  to  their  eyes  in  a  high  degree. 


CHAPTER  II 
ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES 

TO  the  enterprising  stranger  bent  upon  the  exploration  of 
Northumberland,  no  better  headquarters  for  operations 
of  this  nature  upon  the  northern  half  of  the  county  than 
Alnwick  or  Alnmouth  could  be  suggested,  and  if  the  wanderer, 
like  so  many  of  his  fellows,  have  no  choice,  but  to  sally  forth 
between  mid-July  and  mid-September,  some  definite  head- 
quarters is  more  than  desirable.  For  accommodation  in 
Northumbria  is  limited,  and  the  folks  of  the  industrial  centres 
round  and  about  Tyneside  have  recently  developed  a  whole- 
some but  inconvenient  passion  for  the  rural  delights  of  their 
own  county,  a  creditable  impulse  almost  unknown  among  the 
same  classes  a  decade  or  two  ago,  who  were  then  staunch 
patrons  of  the  greater  northern  watering-places,  where  negro 
minstrels  caper  and  bands  bray.  So,  at  least,  I  am  informed. 
Alnmouth  is  a  quiet  little  watering-place,  though  actually 
the  largest  save  suburban  Tynemouth  on  the  Northumberland 
coast,  and  clustering,  as  already  mentioned,  with  considerable 
effect  on  an  elevated  grassy  promontory  where  the  Aln  joins 
the  sea.  The  local  pronunciation  by  the  way  is  Alemouth. 
But  small  watering-places  develop  a  self-consciousness  and 
a  painful  anxiety  to  please  everybody  (except  in  the  matter 
of  charges),  even  those  of  Northumberland,  whose  more  pro- 
vincial folk  retain  the  quality  of  local  patriotism  in  an  exalted 
degree,  and  have  the  stoutest  convictions  that  they  are  the  salt 
of  England  if  not  of  the  earth,  a  pardonable  weakness  at  least 
among  men  who  are  doers  rather  than  spouters  and  measure 
many  inches.  But  the  Alnmouth  people  have  been  corrupted 


ALNWICK,   WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES    15 

by  much  consort  with  townsmen  and  aliens,  and  have  weakly 
given  way  to  the  calling  of  their  town  as  it  is  spelt.  Here  at 
any  rate  the  visitor  will  find  delightful  stretches  of  sand  and 
sward,  a  golf  course  of  the  orthodox  kind  that  was  certainly 
flourishing  twenty  years  ago,  and  the  breath  of  the  North 
Sea  in  fullest  perfection.  No  suggestion  is  here  of  smart  frocks 
or  gorgeous  tailoring,  nor  yet  of  mock  Ethiopians  or  Ally 
Slopers,  but  a  handy  station  on  the  main  line  with  a  branch 
to  Alnwick,  and  many  other  desirable  spots  in  the  romantic 
uplands  of  the  interior. 

Alnwick  is  five  miles  inland,  and  with  its  noble  castle 
spreads  along  the  crest  of  a  hill  in  a  country  that  has  already 
begun  to  be  steep.  It  harbours  about  six  thousand  souls, 
and  has  one  hotel  of  an  unimpeachable  Quarter  Sessions 
aspect,  besides  numerous  tenements  where  genteel  visitors,  as 
the  old  phraseology  of  the  road  had  it,  can  doubtless  find 
comfort  and  attention. 

Alnwick  is  a  brave  old  place,  and  wears  its  years  well,  like 
all  these  northern  towns — too  well  perhaps  for  the  artist. 
For  the  houses  that  line  either  side  of  its  long,  wide,  main 
street,  or  of  the  market-place  and  the  bull  ring  that  open  out 
of  it,  wear  the  sombre  somewhat  uniform  aspect  of  a  town  of 
stone.  Time  and  storm  make  little  impress  on  Northumbrian 
walls,  which,  .within  a  decade  or  two  from  the  mason's  hand, 
assume  a  gravity  of  aspect  almost  worthy  of  their  oldest 
neighbours.  Still,  for  a  northern  town,  Alnwick,  if  hard  and 
grey,  is  almost  picturesque,  and  not  unworthy  of  the  feudal 
atmosphere  which  breathes  all  over  it  from  the  mighty  castle 
at  its  northern  extremity  that  slightly  dominates  it,  and,  in 
a  social  sense,  has  done  so  absolutely,  and  on  the  whole 
beneficently,  with  intervals  since  time  began.  The  street 
nomenclature  of  Alnwick  is  redolent,  as  one  would  expect  of 
siege  and  sally.  There  is  Bondgate  within  and  without, 
Narrowgate,  BailifFgate,  Pottergate,  and  other  names  that 
speak  of  perilous  times.  The  first  of  these,  the  wide,  main 
artery  of  the  town,  is  blocked  midway  in  picturesque  incon- 
venience by  a  massive  turreted  pile,  through  whose  deep 


16         THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

cramped  archway  all  wheeled  traffic  has  to  pass  in  single  file- 
Still,  it  bears  Hotspur's  name,  having  been  erected  by  his 
grandson  in  the  fifteenth  century  as  one  of  the  four  gates  of 
the  town  when  the  latter  was  surrounded  with  high  walls, 
a  considerable  fragment  of  which  still  stands  a  few  feet  high. 
No  true  Northumbrian,  I  should  hope,  would  murmur  at 
having  betimes  to  check  his  steed,  or  even  his  motor,  in 
deference  to  the  time-worn  Percy  lion  which  still  prances 
indistinctly  over  the  portals  of  this  hoary  archway.  For 
Hotspur  is  the  hero  of  Northumbrian  story,  and  competition 
for  the  honour  in  this  hard  hitting  country  must  have  been 
keen.  It  is  even  suggested  that  the  Northumbrian  burr, 
unwriteable  and  quite  unique,  was  originated  by  that  fiery 
soul,  or  rather  that  a  slight  deformity  in  the  hero's  speech 
was  eagerly  imitated  by  the  mail-clad  youth  of  the  north, 
who  held  him  in  every  respect  as  their  model  of  chivalry  and 
human  perfection.  The  clipping  of  the  terminal  g,  a  social 
trick  of  recent  years,  so  zealously  cultivated  even  to  the 
suburbs,  I  have  been  told  on  good  authority  first  emanated 
from  the  stable  proclivities  of  a  famous  ducal  house  pre- 
eminent in  sport.  But  in  this  latter  case,  unlike  Hotspur's 
little  throaty  trouble,  if  the  pretty  legend  may  be  entertained, 
there  was  no  question  of  its  adoption  by  the  lower  classes,  as 
it  was  there  already  in  great  perfection. 

Another  turreted  gateway,  of  mediaeval  aspect  at  the  first 
glance,  guards  the  entrance  of  a  side  street  into  the  town, 
though  raised,  I  believe,  on  the  site  of  a  more  businesslike 
predecessor.  Away  up  among  some  gardens  at  the  top  of 
the  town,  waiting  as  it  were  to  catch  the  eye  of  the  stranger 
as  he  first  emerges  from  the  railway  station,  is  a  stone  obelisk 
about  eighty  feet  in  height.  My  first  impression  on  catching 
sight  of  it,  from  the  precincts  of  the  North  Eastern  Railway, 
was,  oddly  enough,  shared  by  my  companion,  or  I  should 
have  foreborne  to  note  such  an  irrelevant  trifle,  namely,  that 
I  was  in  the  presence  of  some  magnificent  tribute  to  the  late 
Lord  Salisbury  worthy  of  so  stout  a  Tory  stronghold  as 
Alnwick.  At  a  different  angle,  however,  the  supposititious 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE   PERCIES    17 

profile  of  that  great  statesman  developed  into  the  noble  pro- 
portions of  the  Percy  lion.  This  memorial  appears  to  have 
been  reared  early  in  the  last  century  by  a  grateful  tenantry 
to  the  Duke  of  that  day  in  recognition  of  certain  remissions 
of  rent  granted  during  a  period  of  agricultural  depression. 
What  would  the  modern  land  reformer  say  to  that  ?  As  a 
mere  Tory,  I  permitted  myself  the  flippant  reflection  that  if 
this  kindly  impulse  had  animated  tenant  farmers  at  the  end 
of  the  century  as  it  did  these  particular  ones  at  the  begin- 
ning, the  face  of  England  would  resemble  a  gigantic  asparagus 
bed.  But  before  the  Percy  lion  it  behoves  us  to  be  respectful, 
and  indeed  when  facing  it  once  more  over  the  outer  gateway 
of  the  magnificent  castle,  built  by  Hotspur's  grandfather,  at 
the  further  end  of  the  town,  one's  mood  is  wholly  reverential, 
not  merely  towards  those  warlike  Percies  of  old,  but  towards 
a  House  who  has  maintained  itself  at  once  so  worthily  and 
so  conspicuously,  in  peace  and  war,  in  public  and  in  private, 
for  such  a  term  of  centuries. 

At  the  end  of  the  wide,  quiet,  old-fashioned  cross  street 
which  runs  a  brief  course  along  the  northern  fringe  of  the 
steep  hill  above  the  Aln,  a  group  of  lofty  towers  confront 
one  rising  in  flank  and  rear  of  the  fourteenth-century 
barbican  and  gateway.  Each  one  is  associated  with  some 
name  or  story,  while  over  the  entrance  and  along  the  massive 
curtain  wall,  and  elsewhere  conspicuous,  are  a  number  of 
quaint  life-size  figures  of  armed  warriors  in  various  attitudes, 
and  obviously  engaged  in  repelling  a  Scottish  attack.  The 
castle  is  said  to  cover  five  acres,  and  it  looks  imposingly 
down  upon  the  bright  streams  of  the  Aln,  rippling  through 
well-timbered  meadows  far  beneath.  To  grapple  here  with 
such  a  stupendous  mass  of  building  varying  in  period,  com- 
plicated by  much  though  careful  restoration,  such  a  blend  of 
Norman  foundation,  of  fourteenth-century  superstructure 
and  eighteenth-century  additions  and  renovations,  and  with- 
all  so  packed  with  treasure,  is  not  my  intention.  Such 
efforts  within  such  a  small  space  are  apt  to  result  in  the 
mere  cataloguing  and  recording  of  inanimate  objects,  which 


18         THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

I  more  than  suspect  is  not  stimulating  to  the  reader,  who  will 
find  them,  if  the  occasion  demands,  in  pamphlets  or  books  of 
a  more  technical  character.  It  will  be  enough,  perhaps,  to 
say  that  the  general  effect  of  Alnwick,  as  a  combination  of  the 
feudal  past  and  the  modern  residence,  is  generally  regarded 
as  almost  without  an  equal  in  England,  more  particularly  if 
its  imposing  presence  is  associated  with  its  rich  and  abound- 
ing chronicles.  I  do  not  know  Warwick,  but  an  acquaintance 
who  is  a  native,  and  reared  in  the  faith  that  there  was 
nothing  like  it,  admitted  that  when  confronted  recently  with 
Alnwick  that  faith  was  broken.  But  then  Warwick,  like 
most  English  castles  remote  from  frontiers,  is  famous  rather 
for  the  domestic  splendour  and  pageantry  of  its  past.  It  had 
its  warlike  episodes,  no  doubt,  but  it  was  not  the  object  for 
centuries  of  menace  and  attack  by  alien  foes  like  Alnwick, 
Bamburgh,  or  Norham  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  great  castles 
of  the  Welsh  border  on  the  other.  Alnwick  is  a  standing 
monument  to  the  fierce  Anglo-Scottish  wars,  and  the  reader 
will  have  had  his  fill  of  these,  I  dare  say,  before  he  has  done 
with  me.  But  they  come  up  to  me  more  naturally  on  the 
fields  where  they  were  fought  than  beside  the  portraits  or 
the  relics  of  men  who  took  part  in  them.  No  place,  how- 
ever, could  be  so  fitting  as  this  to  say  somewhat  of  the  great 
House  of  Percy,  that  stands,  not  merely  for  Alnwick,  but  for 
Northumberland,  in  a  sense  more  complete  than  does  any 
other  single  family  for  any  one  county  of  England  that  I  can 
think  of,  not  reckoning  merely  by  to-day  or  yesterday,  but 
for  more  than  six  centuries.  Some  dukes  of  great  territorial 
title  have  no  obvious  association  with  it,  and  are  seated  else- 
where. Others  have  quite  uninspiring  titles.  With  many, 
again,  there  is  nothing  to  define  the  sphere  of  their  influence. 
But  with  the  Percies  there  never  has  been,  nor  could  there 
be  now,  any  hesitation  whatever  in  identifying  them  with 
that  broad  territory  between  Tyne  and  Tweed,  between  the 
Cheviots  and  the  sea,  and  within  this,  almost  since  time  is 
worth  counting,  they  have  never  had,  in  the  wide  sense  of 
the  term,  a  rival.  In  a  province  always  well  stocked  with 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE   PERCIES    19 

powerful  and  with  some  quite  illustrious  families,  it  would 
be  safe  to  say  that  none  could  ever  have  been  near  enough  to 
even  feel  aggrieved  that  they  were  not  held  as  the  Percies 
were  held,  with  any  show  of  reason.  Of  envy  and  hatred, 
there  was  always  plenty,  but  hardly  jealousy.  Even  in  these 
democratic  days  this  glamour  of  a  great  name,  so  intimately 
bound  up  for  ages  as  it  is  with  the  stirring  tale  of  North- 
umberland, still  survives  among  people  not  given  to  humility 
or  abasing  themselves,  or  to  honey'd  speech. 

The  first  of  the  name  to  arrive  in  England  came  over  with 
the  Conqueror  from  the  village  of  Perce,  near  St.  Lo  in  Nor- 
mandy, where  he  was  a  noble  of  consequence.  He  was  granted 
lands  near  Whitby  in  Yorkshire,  where  his  zeal  in  agriculture 
and  the  reclaiming  of  waste  lands  seemed  to  have  equalled 
his  valour  in  the  field.  Lest  his  sword  should  rust,  however, 
he  joined  Robert's  crusade,  and  ultimately  fell  within  sight  of 
Jerusalem.  Three  barons  of  his  race  succeeded  him,  till  in 
Henry  the  First's  time  only  a  young  woman  remained  seized 
of  the  family  estate.  Henry's  second  wife,  Adeliza  of  Brabant, 
was  just  then  casting  about  for  an  English  heiress  for  her 
younger  half-brother,  who  had  the  blood  of  Charlemagne  in 
his  veins  but  no  assets  to  speak  of.  An  excellent  and 
accomplished  youth,  however,  was  this  Josceline  de  Louvain, 
and  when  produced  in  England  found  sufficient  favour  in  the 
eyes  of  the  lady  and  her  father,  Baron  William,  to  secure 
their  consent.  But  not  for  all  the  House  of  Brabant  nor  the 
blood  of  Charlemagne  would  the  baron  consent  to  sever  the 
name  of  Percy  from  its  domains.  So  the  young  man  had  in 
that  respect  to  efface  himself,  his  sole  contribution  beyond  his 
virtues  to  the  stock  he  was  to  perpetuate  being  the  Brabant 
motto,  "  Esperance  en  Dieu,"  which,  with  the  name  of  Percy 
substituted  for  that  of  the  deity,  was  to  resound  on  a  hundred 
bloody  fields  in  Britain  and  Europe.  Forty  years  later  a 
grandson  William  of  this  alliance,  aged  fifteen,  was  in  legal 
possession  of  the  family  honours.  A  strenuous  and  acquisi- 
tive Percy  uncle,  however,  who  by  the  custom  of  later  ages 
would  have  himself  had  the  family  honours,  practically  kept 


20         THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

possession  of  the  estates  and  usurped  the  title,  nominally 
as  guardian  till  death  relieved  the  weak  William  in  middle 
age  of  the  thraldom  of  this  overpowering  relative,  a  mighty 
warrior  and  a  friend  of  Cceur  de  Lion,  who,  it  is  asserted, 
would  have  sold  Northumberland  to  the  Scots  as  he  would 
have  sold  anything  for  his  diversions  in  Palestine  but  for 
Richard  Percy.  William  seems  to  have  been  the  only  weak 
Percy  of  the  lot,  for  his  offspring  one  after  another  went 
on  the  warpath  with  the  old  traditional  valour  and  energy. 
It  was  not  till  the  death  of  Edward  the  First,  however,  that 
the  Percies,  still  in  Yorkshire,  acquired  a  footing  in  Northum- 
berland, though  they  had  been  this  long  time  renowned  upon 
the  Scottish  border.  Henry  Percy,  with  his  two  brothers,  was 
entrusted  by  the  great  Edward  on  his  deathbed  at  Burgh- 
on-Sands  with  the  task  of  securing  his  son's  succession,  and 
in  reward  was  permitted  to  purchase  Alnwick,  on  which 
property  it  seems  he  had  for  some  time  cast  a  longing  eye. 
Fighting  Scotmen  being  his  passion,  it  was  only  natural  he 
should  wish  to  be  handier  to  them.  Alnwick  had  been  first 
granted  to  Gilbert  de  Tesson,  one  of  the  Conqueror's  many 
standard-bearers.  Then  it  passed  to  the  De  Vescis,  the  last 
of  whom,  dying  without  heirs  in  1 297,  got  royal  permission  to 
settle  it  on  his  natural  son,  then  an  infant.  Bishop  Beke  of 
Durham  was  made  trustee,  and,  no  doubt  to  show  his  pious 
disapproval  of  his  dead  friend's  amours,  sold  it  to  Henry 
Percy  in  1309,  and  pocketed  the  money.  Percy's  conscience, 
if  not  the  bishop's,  was  pricked,  and  he  voluntarily  made  some 
financial  amends  to  the  despoiled  bastard  and  got  a  free  title. 
Henry  Percy,  now  the  ninth  baron,  set  to  work  to  rebuild  the 
castle,  which  the  episcopal  trustee  had  allowed  to  fall  into  a 
deplorable  condition.  He  built  the  barbican  and  the  gate- 
house, and  the  Abbot's,  Falconers',  Armourers,'  and  Constable's 
tower,  more  or  less  as  they  stand  to-day,  with  many  other 
portions.  This  first  Lord  of  Alnwick,  who  of  course  by  the 
way  retained  his  Yorkshire  estates,  busied  himself,  as  was 
inevitable,  in  the  affairs  of  the  unfortunate  Edward  the 
Second.  He  was  with  him  at  Bannockburn,  and  in  an 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,   AND  THE   PERCIES    21 

endeavour  to  cover  the  route  of  the  English  army  was  taken 
prisoner.  Soon  ransomed,  he  returned  to  Alnwick  to  die,  of 
a  broken  heart,  it  is  said,  at  that  overwhelming  catastrophe  to 
the  English  arms,  a  procedure  not  surely  impossible  for  one 
who  had  fought  by  the  side  of  the  first  Edward. 

His  son,  the  tenth  baron  and  the  fourth  Henry,  was  a 
wonder.  Before  he  was  twenty  he  had  led  his  troops  re- 
peatedly against  the  Scots,  and  had  become  a  terror  to  evil- 
doing  barons  on  his  own  side  of  the  Border,  where  intrigue 
and  outrage  went  hand-in-hand  with  international  strife.  He 
comes  on  the  stage  with  the  first  of  the  great  Douglases.  The 
glory  of  Crecy,  to  be  sure,  was  denied  him,  but  for  a  greater 
individual  though  less  remembered  glory.  For  it  was  to 
defend  England  against  an  army  of  fifty  thousand  Scotsmen 
led  by  Douglas,  and  with  only  such  a  scratch  force  of  clerics 
and  amateurs  as  remained  in  the  north.  "  Good  tall  trencher- 
men, however,  as  were  not  afraid  of  a  cracked  crown,  though 
they  had  no  hair  to  hide  the  wound."  The  Archbishops  of 
Canterbury  and  York,  and  the  Bishops  of  Durham  and 
Carlisle,  commanded  the  four  divisions  respectively.  It 
sounds  to-day  like  a  comic  opera !  but  was  not  in  the  least 
like  one  in  the  performance.  For  with  inferior  numbers,  and 
inferior  but  most  spirited  troops,  he  won  a  crushing  victory 
at  Neville's  Cross/chased  the  Scots  to  Berwick,  and  saved  the 
country  from  incalculable  disaster. 

A  little  fellow  his  son,  of  small  stature  even  when  grown, 
but  of  a  lion  heart,  had  been  fighting  all  this  time  by  his  side, 
and  when  he  succeeded  in  1352,  this  "parvus  miles,"  as  the 
chroniclers  call  him,  "  loyal  and  brave  and  kindly  hearted,  so 
generous  that  he  coveted  not  the  lands  of  others,"  fully  main- 
tained the  glories  of  his  line.  He  led  a  body  of  Northumbrians 
at  Crecy,  but  hurried  back  in  time  to  be  at  his  father's  side 
at  Neville's  Cross,  where  the  spirit  that  animated  his  small 
frame  seems  to  have  shamed  the  laggard's  valour  and  taken 
by  surprise  the  brawny  Scotsmen,  into  whose  ranks  he  threw 
himself  with  unflinching  courage.  The  Wardenship  of  one 
or  more  of  the  Scottish  Marches  had  already  become  a  Percy 


22         THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

appanage,  and  was  held  for  most  of  his  time  by  this  little 
hero,  who  married  in  boyhood  a  Plantagenet,  and  a  daughter 
of  the  Earl  of  Lancaster.  The  affray,  arising  out  of  hunting 
disputes  with  the  Douglas,  which,  blended  with  the  Otterburn 
of  Hotspur,  inspired  the  ballad  of  Chevy  Chace,  is  accredited 
to  the  period  of  this  "parvus  miles."  He  died  in  1368,  and 
was  buried  with  his  father  at  Alnwick. 

His  son,  another  Henry,  was  the  early  and  -constant  friend 
of  his  cousin  John  of  Gaunt.  At  fourteen  he  fought  at 
Poitiers,  and  at  seventeen  married  another  cousin,  a  Neville 
of  Raby.  He  was  knighted  by  the  Black  Prince,  and,  with 
his  brother  Thomas  so  celebrated  in  Froissart,  seems  to  have 
been  in  the  thick  of  everything.  Just  before  his  father's 
death  he  was  Warden  of  both  Marches,  but  was  not,  however, 
fortunate  in  his  early  Scottish  wars,  one  fiasco  and  stampede 
of  his  followers  at  Duns  provoking  a  wealth  of  gibing  Scottish 
rhyme. 

The  hunting  disputes  with  the  Douglases  continued,  lead- 
ing betimes  to  incidents  in  the  prolonged  duel  between  these 
illustrious  families.  In  a  breathing  space  the  Percy  went 
with  a  picked  following  to  France,  taking  with  him  his  son  of 
eight,  afterwards  the  famous  Hotspur,  but  Du  Guesclin  made 
things  too  hot  on  this  occasion  for  the  English.  When  Percy 
returned  to  Alnwick,  he  drowned  his  disappointment  in 
savage  assaults  on  the  Scots,  who  had  been  mercilessly  raid- 
ing Northumberland,  and  for  two  years  fire  and  slaughter 
reigned  ceaselessly  on  the  Border. 

*'  They  spairit  neither  man  nor  wyfe, 
Young  or  old  of  mankind  that  bare  lyfe, 
Like  wilde  wolfis  in  furiositie, 
Baith  brint  and  slewe  with  greate  crueltie." 

The  old  earldom  of  Northumberland  was  revived  by 
Richard  the  Second  in  the  person  of  this  Percy,  who  of  all 
heads  of  his  House  is  perhaps  the  most  familiar  to  us,  not 
merely  as  the  father  of  Hotspur,  but  for  the  long  and  active 
part  he  played  in  the  affairs  of  England.  He  joined  his 
cousin  John  of  Gaunt  in  supporting  Wickliffe,  and  marched 


ALNWICK,   WARKWORTH,   AND  THE   PERCIES     23 

by  his  side,  sword  in  hand,  through  London,  when  he  attended 
the  summons  of  the  bishops  at  St.  Paul's,  and  stood  guard 
over  him  in  the  cathedral  to  the  great  chagrin  of  the  prelates. 
He  was  made  Earl  Marshal  of  England  at  the  accession  of 
Richard  the  Second  under  protest  from  the  daughter  of  the 
Earl  of  Norfolk,  who  claimed  it  by  heredity.  He  kept  it 
just  long  enough  to  officiate  at  the  coronation,  and  then 
threw  it  up  for  the  greater  entertainment  that  was  offered 
just  then  by  the  Scots  on  the  Border,  who  had  seized  Berwick, 
which  he  retook  by  assault  with  Hotspur,  still  a  child  at 
his  side. 

The  latter,  born  at  Alnwick  in  1366,  was  knighted  at  the 
Coronation,  having  already  seen  three  years  of  fighting  in 
France  and  Scotland.  Berwick  was  retaken  by  surprise,  and 
once  more  the  Percies,  after  a  few  days'  siege,  had  to  carry  it 
by  assault.  This  was  led  by  Hotspur,  though  the  sobriquet 
was  not  yet  earned,  at  the  incredible  age  of  twelve.  Every 
Scotsman  was  killed,  and  the  matter  ended  satisfactorily  for 
the  Percies. 

Lancaster  now  came  north  with  an  army  against  the 
Scots,  but  instead  of  fighting  them  made  a  humiliating  peace 
while  his  men  ravaged  in  Northumberland.  Earl  Percy  now 
flung  off  his  lifelong  friend,  and  at  a  royal  banquet  soon  after 
at  Berkhampstead  the  two  came  to  blows,  and  had  to  be 
separated  by  force,  Percy  being  locked  up  and  bound  over  to 
keep  the  peace.  At  the  first  opportunity,  however,  the  feud 
broke  out  again,  and  the  two  enemies,  with  their  several 
retainers,  treated  the  terrified  citizens  of  London  to  a  series 
of  gigantic  street  fights.  The  Percy  war-cry,  however,  was 
needed  again  in  Scotland  ;  and  then,  under  threat  of  French 
invasion,  young  Henry  was  sent  with  a  force  of  nine  hundred 
men  to  guard  Yarmouth.  The  French  not  turning  up,  this 
fiery  soul  impressed  all  the  Yarmouth  fishing-boats,  and  went 
to  hunt  them  up  at  home,  ravaging  the  country  round  Cdais, 
and  bringing  off  a  store  of  booty.  It  was  the  rapidity  of  this 
enterprise  that  gained  him  among  his  followers  the  name  of 
"  Hotspur,"  which  quickly  spread ;  for  he  now  became  the 


24    THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

idol  of  the  gilded  youth  of  England.  "  They  acclaimed  him 
in  London  louder  than  the  King."  His  very  defect  of  speech 
was  imitated,  and  competition  was  keen  to  enter  his  service. 
Bitter  jealousy  was  inevitable  among  some  of  those  he  had 
supplanted,  and  they  attempted  his  death  by  tampering  with 
a  boat  in  which  he  sailed  for  France,  but  he  was  reserved  for 
a  nobler  end.  We  shall  meet  Hotspur,  however,  and  his 
border  fights  again,  while  the  conspicuous  part  which  he  and 
his  father  played  in  the  events  which  led  to  the  former's 
death  at  Shrewsbury  and  the  latter's  execution  later  on  are 
a  familiar  bit  of  English  history.  The  confiscation  of  the 
Percy  estates  and  the  long  refuge  of  Hotspur's  young  son. 
the  heir,  at  the  court  of  Scotland,  make  a  short  break  in  the 
breathless  tale  of  this  vigorous  race.  In  1416,  the  year  after 
Agincourt,  the  lad  was  restored  by  Henry  the  Fifth  as  second 
earl  to  the  full  honours  and  possessions  of  his  forefathers. 
His  first  act  was  to  procure  his  grandfather's  mouldering 
head  from  London,  and  bury  it  in  Hotspur's  grave  at  York 
Minster.  He  married  a  Neville,  and  some  romance  has 
gathered  about  the  marriage,  through  the  well-known  ballad 
on  Warkworth  Hermitage  by  his  remote  descendant,  Bishop 
Percy,  of  anecdotal  and  Border  ballad  fame. 

It  will  be  enough  to  say  that  the  second  earl  was  in  every 
way  worthy  of  his  ancestors.  He  was  Warden  of  the  Marches, 
raised  armies,  and  fought  the  kind  hosts  of  his  youth  across 
the  Border  with  patriotic  and  conscientious  ardour.  He  also 
rebuilt  the  walls  of  Alnwick,  which  had  been  laid  low  by 
them.  But  he  was  also  useful  in  making  conciliatory  arrange- 
ments with  Scotland,  short-lived  though  they  were,  and  in 
performing  the  same  office  in  regard  to  France,  where  he 
resided  for  a  time  as  ambassador.  Hotspur's  son  was  dis- 
tinguished in  the  tourney  as  in  the  field,  where  he  and  the 
Scots  gave  each  other  many  hard  knocks.  Alnwick  itself  on 
one  occasion  was  burnt  and  sacked  by  the  latter.  Constantly 
spoken  of  as  "  the  great  Earl  of  Northumberland,"  he  embraced 
the  Lancastrian  side,  and  fell  at  St.  Albans  in  a  gallant 
attempt  to  save  the  day  in  1455. 


ALNWICK,   WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES    25 

The  next  Henry  and  third  earl  was  a  seasoned  warrior 
of  thirty-four  when  he  succeeded  his  father.  Though  the 
Yorkists  were  dominant  they  dare  not  tamper  with  the 
succession  of  a  man  who  had  already  "  at  his  own  expense  " 
and  in  his  own  person  beaten  back  a  Scottish  invasion  of 
England.  He  fought  like  a  lion  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses, 
commanding  the  defeated  Lancastrian  army  at  Towton  Field, 
where  he  and  one  of  his  three  remaining  brothers  who  fought 
with  him  fell  fighting  valiantly.  Acts  of  attainder  were  now 
taken  out  by  Edward  the  Fourth's  Parliament  against  the 
Percies,  of  whom  Sir  Ralph  was  the  only  remaining  brother. 
He  held  Dunstanburgh  with  a  picked  force  against  every 
attempt  to  dislodge  him,  and  so  harried  the  Yorkists  of  the 
county,  though  all  England  was  now  in  their  hands,  that  the 
king  pardoned  in  despair  the  "Gledd  (Kite)  of  Dunstan- 
burgh," as  he  was  called  in  the  north,  and  made  him  governor 
of  the  castle.  Even  this  did  not  conciliate  Sir  Ralph,  who, 
fetching  men  out  of  Scotland  and  filling  the  immense  fortress 
as  full  as  it  would  hold,  joined  Queen  Margaret  and  the 
indifferent  force  she  soon  after  landed  with.  Then  was 
fought  the  battle  of  Hedgely  Moor  between  Alnwick  and 
the  Cheviots.  Out-numbered  and  out-manceuvred,  the  queen's 
generals,  Somerset,  Hungerford,  and  Roos,  fled  without 
striking  a  blow.  Percy  alone  remained  to  face  his  foe,  and 
fell  where  his  cross  still  stands,  in  a  wood  by  the  Wooler 
road.  His  enigmatic  dying  speech,  "  I  have  saved  the  bird 
in  my  bosom,"  is  a  famous  Northumbrian  tradition,  uttered 
as  a  note  of  thankfulness  for  having  preserved  to  the  last  his 
loyalty  to  the  Lancastrian  house.  The  late  earl's  only  son, 
now  a  penniless  refugee  of  seventeen  at  the  court  of  the 
Scottish  king,  is  said  to  have  been  the  only  Percy  left  alive 
who  could  prove  his  descent  from  the  ancient  house,  and 
stood  between  it  and  extinction.  How  he  emerged  from 
poverty  and  danger,  was  ultimately  accepted  by  Edward,  and 
restored  to  all  the  estates  and  honours  of  the  Percies,  cannot 
be  told  here.  Warden  of  the  Middle  and  East  Marches, 
Bailiffe  of  Tynedale,  Judiciary  of  the  King's  forests  beyond 


26    THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Trent,  Constable  of  Newcastle,  Bamburgh,  and  Dunstanburgh, 
and  Commissioner  of  the  Royal  mines  in  the  North,  may  be 
set  down  as  a  typical  list  of  the  honours  and  offices  borne  by 
the  house  of  Percy  as  their  normal  appanage.  It  must  be 
noted  also  that  they  still  held  large  properties  in  Yorkshire, 
with  the  three  residences  of  Leckonfield,  Topcliffe,  and 
Wressill,  and  a  family  mansion  in  York.  This  fourth  earl 
held  the  family  traditions,  but  deserted  to  the  House  of 
Lancaster  on  Bos  worth  field,  and  afterwards  headed  a  force 
into  Scotland,  took  a  lead,  though  an  unpopular  one,  in 
northern  matters,  and  was  finally  murdered  in  loyal  but 
unwilling  attempts  to  collect  the  extortionate  taxes  levied 
by  that  grasping,  clever,  undesirable  monarch  Henry  the 
Seventh. 

His  son,  the  fifth  earl,  was  twelve  at  his  father's  death  in 
1490.  At  nineteen  he  commanded  "the  northern  horse," 
raised  by  himself  against  Perkin  Warbeck  at  Blackheath,  and 
when  of  age  assumed  such  gorgeous  state  that  he  was  known 
as  "The  Magnificent."  He  astonished  the  northern  gentry 
with  his  splendour,  and  delighted  them  with  his  feasts.  At 
every  function,  royal  and  local,  he  outshone  the  best.  The 
details  of  his  trappings  and  his  retinues  are  an  education  in 
mediaeval  millinery.  He  conducted  the  Princess  Margaret 
to  her  royal  husband  of  Scotland,  and  entertained  her  sump- 
tuously at  Alnwick,  where  she  shot  a  buck  in  the  park.  This 
could  only  have  led  to  one  result  with  the  mean,  grasping 
king,  who  trumped  up  a  charge,  and  mulcted  his  over- 
magnificent  subject  to  the  tune  of  ^10,000  in  the  way  of  a 
fine,  an  enormous  sum  for  those  days. 

With  his  northern  horse  he  was  in  the  van  of  victory  at 
the  battle  of  the  Spurs.  But  like  most  of  the  English  chivalry, 
his  French  campaign  lost  him  the  great  glory  of  Flodden, 
where,  however,  his  younger  brother  worthily  represented  the 
race.  But  Wolsey,  under  Henry  the  Eighth,  had  now  set 
himself  to  humble  the  great  nobles,  and  the  proudest  of  all 
of  them  was  soon  in  trouble  and  in  prison.  It  is  a  long  story  ; 
but  crippled  financially  by  extravagance,  and  broken  and 


ALNWICK,   WARKWORTH,   AND  THE    PERCIES    27 

soured  by  the  invulnerable  antagonism  and  persecution  of 
the  plebeian  autocrat,  the  "  magnificent  earl "  lost  heart,  and 
became  a  man  broken,  not  only  in  fortune  but  in  spirit.  He 
shrank  from  all  those  Border  responsibilities  identified  with 
the  head  of  this  race,  and  Northumbrians  began  to  scorn  the 
man  who  had  once  delighted  them,  while  the  contrast  to  his 
brother  Thomas,  a  conspicuous  hero  of  Flodden,  who  had 
spent  his  life  in  the  Border  passes,  became  the  subject  of 
irreverent  minstrels.  Once  he  roused  himself  and  led  a  force 
into  Scotland,  but  only  to  stir  the  jealousy  of  Dacre,  who  had 
occupied  the  position  on  the  Border  he  had  shrunk  from. 
His  son's  partiality  for  Anne  Boleyn  was  making  further 
mischief  at  Court.  Every  expense  too  that  could  be  thrust 
on  him  was  seized  upon  in  the  king's  name  by  Wolsey.  In 
short,  he  was  crushed  by  financial  adversity,  due,  not  to  vulgar 
dissipation,  but  partly  to  the  prodigal  splendours  of  his  youth 
and  partly  to  the  untiring  fashion  in  which  Wolsey  hunted 
him  to  his  ruin.  He  died  a  broken  man  in  1527  with  £14. 
to  his  credit,  while  his  funeral  had  to  be  paid  for  on  the 
security  of  what  remained  of  his  plate.  So  complete  had 
been  the  victory  of  the  Great  Minister,  the  "butcher's  son," 
over  the  unfortunate  earl,  that  his  son  and  heir  actually 
numbered  one  of  the  eight  hundred  persons  who  formed  that 
arrogant  cleric's  household.  This  youth,  the  sixth  earl,  is 
known  as  "the  unlucky."  Reared  softly  at  the  Court,  he 
became  early  enamoured  of  Anne  Boleyn,  and  their  troth  was 
privately  plighted  about  the  time  the  king  first  began  to  ogle 
her.  Her  loss  threw  Percy  into  a  serious  illness,  from  which 
he  never  rightly  recovered,  being  sickly  all  his  life.  He  was 
afterwards  married  to  a  dowerless  bride,  a  Talbot,  under  con- 
ditions of  mutual  dislike,  while  his  impoverished  estates  were 
administered  by  Wolsey  with  rigid  parsimony  as  regards  the 
hapless  owner.  His  very  wedding  festivities,  says  a  family 
chronicler,  were  unworthy  of  a  yeoman's  son,  and  the  young 
jarring  couple  were  allowed  fourteen  shillings  a  week  and  four 
servants  for  housekeeping.  So  much  of  the  revenue  as  did 
not  stick  in  the  hands  of  Wolsey's  agents  went  to  the  Crown. 


28         THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

But  the  Percy  name  was  great,  and  he  was  sent  north  as 
Warden  General  of  the  Marches.  He  had  arrived  at  Alnwick 
in  a  litter,  and  the  scorn  of  the  Border  barons  for  the  sickly, 
gloomy,  and  London-reared  stripling  was  loud,  Percy  though 
he  was.  He  soon  showed  to  their  amazement  that  he  was 
very  much  one.  The  Scots  had  recovered  from  the  blow  of 
Flodden  and  were  raiding  merrily.  The  English  borderers 
were  at  feuds  with  one  another  and  also  raiding  Durham, 
and  even  the  earl's  own  brothers  were  in  the  thick  of  the 
fun.  Halls,  Redes,  Charltons,  Fosters,  Hedleys,  Milburns, 
Robsons,  and  a  score  more  of  less  renewed  septs  are  listed  and 
numbered  as  on  the  war  path,  raiding  and  burning,  while  even 
Lysles,  Erringtons,  Swinburnes,  and  Shaftos,  and  the  earl's 
two  brothers,  abandoning  all  decency  and  the  traditions  of  the 
more  responsible  septs,  joined  in  their  indiscriminating  forays. 
Though  nipped  by  the  keen  air  of  the  North,  this  frail,  court- 
bred  youth  hunted  them  down  and  laid  them  wholesale  by  the 
heels,  and  strung  them  up  at  Alnwick  by  the  dozen.  But 
the  sanguinary  tide  of  Border  war  rolled  back  and  forth  till 
the  half  of  the  North  rose  in  the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace.  The 
earl's  brothers  were  in  it,  but  the  earl  himself  lay  worn  out 
and  ill  in  Yorkshire  with  neither  the  wish  nor  the  power  §to 
join.  The  failure  was  complete,  the  vengeance  of  the  king  in 
the  northern  dales  frightful.  The  earl  soon  afterwards  died 
without  male  issue,  and  long  separated  from  his  impossible 
wife.  His  next  brother's  son,  the  rightful  heir,  was  an  outlaw 
by  his  father's  attainder,  and  the  estates  were  vested  in  the 
Crown. 

The  protector  Somerset  restored  the  youth  to  his  mother's 
property,  and  Queen  Mary  created  him  Earl  of  Northumber- 
land with  all  its  honours  and  estates.  The  return  of  a 
restored  Percy  created  enthusiasm  throughout  the  North ; 
the  son,  too,  of  a  regular  hardy  Border  fighting  Percy  who 
had  been  out  and  fallen  in  the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace ;  a 
martial,  sporting,  jovial  Percy,  not  greatly,  gifted  but  much 
beloved.  Through  Mary's  reign  everything  went  well  in  the 
Catholic  North.  Border  feuds  went  merrily  on  with  the 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE   PERCIES    29 

Scots,  and  everybody  was  happy,  except  no  doubt  the  women 
and  children.  Then  came  Elizabeth,  and  the  North  with 
most  of  its  chieftains  became  objects  of  mistrust  and,  when 
possible,  of  royal  plunder.  Cecil  hated  the  Percies,  and 
putjjiis  own  men  into  their  places  and  worried  them  in  every 
way.  The  earl  in  disgust  threw  up  his  northern  offices, 
retired  to  Petworth,  his  Sussex  property,  and  devoted  him- 
self to  sport.  Back  in  Yorkshire,  hunting  still,  but  wielding 
much  influence  and  with  frank  sympathy  for  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots,  who  had  lately  passed  through,  he  became  an  object 
of  baseless  but  plausible  suspicion.  Court  spies  and  officials 
were  busy  reporting  the  post-prandial  utterances  of  the 
northern  gentry,  some  of  whom  were  disaffected,  particularly 
Westmoreland,  his  fellow  magnate  on  the  Border,  more 
especially  his  wife.  Percy  and  his  really  noble  wife  had  no 
serious  designs  on  Government.  They  were  suddenly  thrust 
into  a  corner  by  a  peremptory  summons  with  others  to 
London,  which  meant  certain  imprisonment.  The  horrors 
of  the  massacres  following  the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace  were 
fresh  in  the  North,  and  it  began  to  arm.  The  earl  and  his 
wife,  pressed  by  their  friends,  and  with  the  designs  of  Cecil 
only  too  obvious,  had  scarcely  an  alternative,  and  the  upshot 
was  the  Rising  of  the  North.  How  this  failed  is  common 
history.  How  the  earl  and  his  wife  were  hunted  through  the 
wild  moorlands  of  the  North  Tyne  is  Border  history,  and 
we  shall  be  on  their  track  later.  It  is  a  very  long  story. 
Northumberland,  a  refugee  in  Scotland  that,  as  a  nation, 
showed  him  great  sympathy,  was  held  as  a  possible  hostage 
for  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  by  Murray,  but  Murray  fell,  and 
Mar  and  Morton  had  the  earl  a  captive  on  Lochleven.  In 
the  end  the  Scottish  regents,  to  the  disgust  of  every  honest 
Scotsman,  sold  him  for  ^"2000.  Elizabeth  played  her  cat-and- 
mouse  game  for  a  time,  partly  from  constitutional  hypocrisy 
and  partly  from  a  hitch  in  the  Percy  entail  which  made  a 
transfer  to  her  of  the  estates  momentarily  awkward ;  when 
this  was  cleared,  she  cut  off  the  head  of  another  brave 
and  rather  simple  gentleman,  in  part  hounded  to  hopeless 


30         THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

rebellion.  Once  again  the  northern  dales  ran  with  the  blood 
of  unresisting  yeomen  and  peasants,  both  men  and  women,  in 
the  name  of  religion  in  which  Gloriana  took  a  stimulating 
personal  interest.  These  little  trifles  belong  to  Border  history, 
and  are  lightly  dealt  with  by  her  many  biographers.  Thus 
fell  the  seventh  earl,  cheery  to  the  last,  and  ready  to  talk  of 
hawks  and  hounds  almost  at  the  foot  of  the  scaffold.  For 
a  generation  afterwards  the  Percy  estates  in  the  north  of 
England  suffered  from  the  number  of  farms  worked  by 
widows  and  boys,  so  bloody  was  the  vengeance  of  Elizabeth 
and  Cecil. 

I  have  already,  however,  carried  the  Percy  story  beyond 
the  time  when  the  Tudor  policy  of  destroying  the  power  of 
the  great  nobility  had  effectually  severed  the  dominant 
Northumbrian  house  from  its  historical  position  on  the 
Scottish  march.  The  union  of  the  Crowns  following  soon 
after,  deprived  the  Border  and  its  affairs  of  any  further 
international  significance,  and  the  House  of  Percy,  in  any 
case,  were  less  in  evidence  in  Northumberland  than  either  in 
the  pre-Tudor  or  the  Georgian  days,  when  they  once  more 
became  an  active  power  in  the  now  peaceful  and  progressive 
North. 

Almost  every  one  knows  how  the  male  succession  failed, 
and  in  the  eighteenth  century  a  Smithson  married  the  lady 
who  afterwards  ^became,  and  somewhat  unexpectedly,  the 
heiress,  and  took  the  name  and  honour  of  the  Percies,  which 
last  by  then  had  been  carried  by  an  heiress  to  the  Seymours. 
This  other  heiress,  the  grandmother  of  that  one  who  married 
a  Smithson,  was  individually  much  more  famous,  in  that  she 
married  her  third  husband,  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  at  the  age 
of  sixteen.  Neither  of  the  two  fortunate  gentlemen  who  had 
previously  married  the  greatest  heiress  of  her  day,  Lord 
Ogle  and  Mr.  Thomas  Thynne,  lived  a  year,  the  latter  being 
murdered.  The  homely  name  of  Smithson  in  such  a  connec- 
tion has  provoked  many  a  sally  from  Walpole's  time  to  this. 
But  Sir  Hugh  was  the  third  baronet  with  ample  Yorkshire 
estates  and  of  an  ancient  yeomen  family  that  had  made  a 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES    31 

fortune  in  trade.  He  became  the  first  Duke  of  Northumber- 
land. The  Yorkshire  Percy  estates  did  not  come  with  his 
wife,  so  the  family  interest  was  concentrated  henceforth 
wholly  on  Northumberland,  and  in  1768,  after  two  hundred 
years  of  more  or  enforced  absenteeism,  Alnwick  castle  in 
preference  to  Warkworth  was  permanently  refitted,  the  vast 
neglected  estates  taken  seriously  in  hand,  and  the  Percies 
seated  definitely  again  on  their  native  soil. 

At  the  brink  of  the  ridge  which  here  drops  abruptly  to 
the  woody  Aln,  the  ancient  parish  church,  is  finely  planted, 
a  fitting  outpost  to  the  long  array  of  castle  towers  rising 
in  the  immediate  background.  With  a  massive  tower  sup- 
ported at  each  corner  by  buttresses,  climbing  almost  to  its 
embattled  summit,  the  main  features  of  the  building,  erected 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  are  Perpendicular,  though  there  are 
some  scant  remains  of  a  Norman  predecessor.  Both  nave 
and  chancel  are  flanked  by  two  side  aisles,  the  octagonal 
pillars  supporting  the  arcades  of  the  latter  being  singularly 
graceful  and  profusely  decorated.  There  are  heraldic  re- 
minders of  the  Percies  at  many  points,  and  some  fine  windows 
to  a  later  duke,  but  no  old  mortuary  tributes  to  the  family 
such  as  one  might  expect  to  find  at  the  very  threshold  of 
Alnwick  castle.  Sufficiently  interesting,  however,  is  the  well- 
preserved  effigy  of  a  female  lying  beneath  a  decorated 
canopy,  and  thought  to  be  the  last  de  Vesci  lady  who 
played  the  chatelaine  at  Alnwick.  There  are  a  few  un- 
identified effigies  and  some  minor  treasures  of  unknown 
date,  such  as  invariably  find  their  way  to  the  light  in  all 
old  churches  covering  the  site  of  a  still  more  ancient  one. 
There  is  much  handsome  woodwork  too,  and  stained  glass 
of  more  recent  date,  and  many  interesting  features  in  the 
external  masonry.  But  the  general  effect  is  full  worthy  of 
the  site  and  its  ^environments,  while  around  it  the  dust  of 
long-forgotten  unrecorded  Borderers  lies  thick  beneath  the 
sod  of  a  level  widespreading  churchyard,  and  a  forest  of 
mortuary  slabs  or  altar  tombs  displays  the  oft-recurring 
northern  names  of  their  more  law-abiding  descendants. 


32         THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

The  duke's  park,  which  spreads  away  westwards  for  some 
miles  on  either  side  of  the  buoyant  streams  of  Aln,  is  as 
delightful  a  blend  of  art  and  nature  as  I  have  ever  met  within 
a  walled  enclosure.  But  the  course  of  this  wall  must  be  some- 
thing like  ten  miles  running  from  the  outskirts  of  Alnwick  to 
the  summit  of  the  high  moors  at  the  back,  which  lead  westward 
again  to  still  higher  and  wilder  ones.  There  is  everything 
one  looks  for  in  the  best  park  scenery  of  England  ;  stately 
woods  of  beech  and  oak  and  ash  threaded  by  winding  walks 
and  roads,  with  ample  pastures  browsed  by  herds  of  deer 
or  picturesque  Highland  cattle.  But  there  is  a  good  deal 
more  than  this,  for  amid  its  whole  length  the  Aln  urges  its 
bright  streams  through  woody  glens,  where  the  forester  for 
generations  would  seem  to  have  been  alert  to  stimulate  the 
efforts  of  Nature  without  too  conspicuously  intruding  his  own. 
Tumbling  over  rocky  channels,  or  gliding  along  pebbly 
reaches,  the  little  river  asks  nothing  of  art,  but  nevertheless 
is  no  worse  for  such  care  as  gives  scope  to  the  varied  wood- 
land that  here  clothes  the  steeps  above  it,  or  there  keeps 
health  and  vigour  in  the  noble  trees  that  are  scattered  over 
the  opposing  slopes.  Occasionally,  some  great  Douglas  pine 
or  other  exotic  evergreen  rises  strangely  among  the  oaks, 
the  alders,  or  the  stalwart  limbs  of  the  Northumbrian  ash 
that  guard  the  stream,  and  betimes  some  bank  of  flowering 
shrubs'  makes  a  patch  of  welcome  and  unexpected  colour. 
And  as  you  track  the  little  river  up  its  winding  vale,  for 
some  two  or  three  miles,  these  lower  ridges  of  ithe  demesne 
leap  up  to  altogether  loftier  altitudes,  and  terminate  in  a 
background  of  wooded  heights  and  open  moorland  that  looks 
far  away  over  the  central  vales  of  Northumberland  to  the 
distant  Cheviot 

The  remains  of  two  once  considerable  abbeys  give  further 
distinction  to  the  park ;  that  of  the  Blessed  Mary  near  the 
lower  entrance,  and  Hulne  Abbey  which  crowns  the  summit 
of  a  well-timbered  slope  two  miles  up  the  river.  Of  the 
former  there  is  nothing  now  left  but  an  extremely  fine 
fifteenth-century  turreted  gate  tower,  bearing  the  arms  of  the 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES    33 

de  Vesci,  a  lady  of  which  family  with  her  husband,  Eustace 
Fitz  John,  founded  the  House  in  1147.  Snugly  and  pic- 
turesquely seated  in  a  meadow  near  the  river  and  sheltered 
by  enfolding  hills,  its  first  possessors  were  a  colony  of  Pre- 
monstratensian  monks,  one  of  whom  may  be  seen  standing 
in  stone  to-day  in  a  niche  on  the  tower.  I  do  not  know  their 
story  ;  probably  the  near  neighbourhood  of  the  castle  secured 
it  from  unpleasant  and  dramatic  episodes,  but  a  chronicle  by 
one  of  their  monks,  or  its  copy,  exists  I  believe  in  the  British 
Museum,  while  the  performances  of  the  ubiquitous  Robin 
Hood  seems  to  have  inspired  another  of  them  to  poetic 
effort.  Their  particular  treasure  was  the  uncorrupted  foot 
of  Simon  de  Montfort,  which  they  preserved  in  a  silver  case. 
Tradition  credits  it  with  some  wonderful  cures,  though  pre- 
cisely why  the  flesh  of  that  able  but  mundane  partisan  should 
have  possessed  such  pious  efficacy  is  not  very  obvious.  Sacri- 
legious Alnwickian  house-builders  of  past  generations  are 
responsible,  I  was  told,  for  the  disappearance  of  the  Abbey. 
At  any  rate,  we  may  be  thankful  that  the  noble  old  gateway 
tower  still  stands  in  such  massive  perfection,  and  bids  fair, 
with  the  help  of  a  more  enlightened  generation,  to  defy  the 
ages.  When  I  last  saw  it,  the  glory  of  a  drooping  September 
sun  was  streaming  down  the  narrow  vale  over  the  rain- 
freshened  verdure  of  the  smooth  mead,  in  which  it  stands 
out  from  a  background  of  noble  forest  trees,  and  illuminating 
with  roseate  hues  its  warm  red  sandstone  face.  The  cock 
pheasants  were  calling  in  the  wood  above,  and  a  waterfall  on 
the  river  beside  it  made  soothing  music.  Altogether  it  was 
a  peaceful  and  uplifting  scene  and  abides  with  me. 

Hulne  Abbey,  under  any  and  all  conditions,  is  a  yet  more 
engaging  retreat.  Far  away  in  the  depths  of  the  chase,  set 
high  above  the  stream  on  a  steep  grassy  hill,  to  which  huge 
forest  trees  cling  and  wave  their  branches  above  its  still  high 
encircling  walls,  it  is  a  place  of  much  fascination.  The  walled 
enclosure,  entered  through  a  hoary  turreted  gateway,  suggests 
not  merely  a  monastery  but  a  fortress,  as  well  it  may  in  a 
country  where  monks,  like  other  men,  lived  in  a  state  of  war. 
D 


34         THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

The  interior  must  cover  a  full  acre  of  ground,  on  which  con- 
siderable portions  of  many  of  the  old  buildings  are  still 
standing.  A  single  comparatively  modern  tower  is  some- 
what of  a  blemish,  but  hard  by  it  is  another,  built  by  that 
fourth  Earl  of  Northumberland  who  was  murdered  in  his 
attempts  to  enforce  the  exactions  of  his  master,  Henry  the 
Seventh,  in  the  north.  A  contemporary  inscription  in  whimsi- 
cal English  and  spelling  to  match  extols  the  builder's  worth, 
though  at  Bosworth  field  he  had  lost  reputation  for  what 
looked  like  a  sudden  desertion  of  Richard  at  the  crisis  of  the 
battle,  and  briefly  eulogizes  his  lady,  the  daughter  of  "Sir 
William  Harbirt  right  noble  and  hardy." 

Much  of  the  walls  and  five  lancet  windows  of  the  church 
remain,  the  singularly  narrow  proportions  of  which — some 
130  by  29  feet — strike  one  instantly.  Close  by,  one  is  startled 
almost  into  an  apology  on  turning  a  corner  by  coming  sud- 
denly on  the  life-size  stone  figure  of  a  Carmelite  friar — to 
which  rigid  fraternity  the  house  belonged — kneeling  on  the 
grass  at  his  devotions.  Portions  of  the  chapter  house,  and  frag- 
ments of  other  buildings,  with  several  carved  figures  and  coffin 
lids,  would  make  a  long  list  of  details,  tedious  to  the  reader. 
Many  more  perfect  monuments  of  the  monastic  period,  many 
infinitely  more  splendid,  are  to  be  found  than  this  one.  But 
for  compactness,  for  suggestiveness,  and  for  its  absolute  repose 
and  charm  of  natural  seclusion,  I  know  nothing  better,  and 
I  am  sure  I  never  myself  felt  quite  so  near  the  old  monks  as 
within  the  four  rampart  walls  of  this  quiet  hilltop  monastery 
of  Hulne.  There  are  several  accounts  of  the  manner  of  its 
creation.  But  it  seems  that  William  de  Vesci,  of  Alnwick, 
and  Richard  Gray,  a  brother  Northumbrian,  while  on  a  crusade 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Third,  paid  a  visit  of  curiosity  to 
the  monks  on  Mount  Carmel.  Here  they  found  one  Ralph 
Fresborn,  another  Northumbrian,  an  old  crusader  recently 
turned  monk,  who  appears  to  have  made  such  an  impression 
on  them  that  they  brought  him  home  and  set  him  up  with 
a  Carmelite  order  in  an  establishment  of  his  own  upon  this 
spot,  which  he  himself  selected  as  reminding  him  of  Mount 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES     35 

Carmel !  whether  he  found  the  Christian  Scots  better  neigh- 
bours than  the  Saracens  one  may  not  know.  At  any  rate, 
Earl  Percy,  two  hundred  years  later,  as  we  do  know,  had 
to  build  a  pele  tower  for  the  monks'  defence,  even  Friar 
Fresborn's  once  embattled  and  still  lofty  walls  not  being 
proof  against  them. 

A  few  of  us,  no  doubt,  come  to  Alnwick  in  retrospective 
mood  to  dream  complacently  of  times  we  are  thankful  not  to 
have  lived  in,  and,  incidently,  to  admire  the  scenes  which  here 
so  greatly  help  to  stimulate  one's  fancies.  But  the  visitors 
who  chiefly  galvanize  the  ancient  town  into  weekly  and 
monthly  bursts  of  animation  are  bent  wholly  upon  cattle  and 
sheep,  and  in  a  minor  degree  upon  grain.  Alnwick  is  the 
most  important  country  town  in  Northumberland,  if  we  except 
Berwick,  which  holds  most  of  a  Scottish  county  in  its  com- 
mercial grasp,  and  is  still  ill-pleased  at  being  no  longer 
reckoned  as  the  fourth  estate  of  the  British  crown.  The 
typical  Northumbrian  farmer,  though  smaller  fry  prevail  in 
some  parts,  does  not  come  to  market  in  a  donkey  cart,  nor 
on  pony  back,  nor  yet  in  a  spring-cart  or  a  rusty  gig,  but  in 
a  smart  trap,  or  with  a  first-class  season  ticket,  as  the  scale  of 
his  operations  justifies,  or  occasionally  on  a  young  hunter. 
The  good  old  dealing  days  when  men  pitted  their  wits  and 
their  judgment  against  one  another  and  soothed  the  zest  of 
combat  by  frequent  libations  are  practically  over.  Stock  are 
disposed  of  at  periodical  auction  sales.  Some  elderly  farmers 
of  my  acquaintance  deplore  this  change  which  levels  every- 
body and  leaves  the  man  endowed  with  that  precious  talent, 
sometimes  inherited,  sometimes  laboriously  acquired,  for 
estimating  to  a  fraction  an  animal's  value  and  possibilities  at 
no  advantage  over  those  not  thus  gifted.  They  declare  that 
the  young  man  of  to-day  has  few  opportunities  for  acquiring 
this  old  hall-mark  to  respect,  that  a  hundred  auctions  get  him 
no  nearer  to  it,  while  the  sporting  aspect  of  aj  protracted 
bargain,  this  rubbing  of  wit  against  wit,  this  thinking  one 
thing  and  protesting  another  with  inscrutable  countenance, 
seem  to  the  ancients,  or  the  shrewder  of  them,  a  great  social 


36         THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

and  intellectual  loss  to  the  farmer's  life.  Their  sons  no  doubt 
hold  differently,  and  feel  that  a  load  is  lifted  off  them,  and 
are  quite  content  that  the  limited  pleasures  of  the  horse  deal, 
which  no  properly  constituted  rural  soul  would  part  with,  still 
remains  to  cheer  their  business  cares. 

This  sort  of  talk,  however,  will  not  do  ;  we  have  not  yet 
done  with  the  Percies,  for  the  towers  of  Warkworth,  their 
second  fortress,  still  confront  us  but  a  few  miles  away,  and 
Warkworth  is  a  place  of  high  renown.  The  little  town  which 
its  ruins  dominate  lies  a  mile  from  its  own  station,  the  next 
one  to  the  south  of  Alnwick  on  the  main  line.  It  climbs  up, 
while  the  castle  crowns  a  slope  above  the  Coquet  which  enfolds 
both  in  a  loop,  and  is  here  sufficiently  near  its  junction  with 
the  sea  to  give  Warkworth  a  claim  to  consider  itself  a  sea- 
side place.  There  is  nothing  of  this,  however,  in  the  quite 
feudal-looking  entry  to  the  foot  of  the  town  by  way  of  an 
ancient  stone  bridge,  of  two  arches  originally  built  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  with  a  tower  gateway  of  still  earlier  date 
commanding  the  further  side  of  it.  It  spans  the  Croquet, 
too,  that  romantic  and  much-sung-of  stream  which  here, 
within  sound  of  the  sea,  still  sweeps  with  broad,  clear  current 
over  a  gravelly  bed,  and  looks  all  over  the  noted  haunt 
that  it  is  of  those  various  types  of  the  salmon  tribe  which 
the  inland  Northumbrian  countryman  conveniently  groups 
under  the  generic  name  of  "seafish."  The  town,  with  its 
long  street  ascending  gradually  to  the  castle,  and  its  market 
cross,  has  a  distinct  flavour  of  ancient  times,  and  is  worthy  of 
a  name  that  to  the  ears  of  most  people  probably  still  carries 
some  faint  echo  of  the  clash  of  arms,  and,  above  all,  it  was 
the  home  of  Hotspur.  Sombre  of  tone,  but  for  an  occasional 
red-tiled  roof,  its  small  two-storied  houses  of  solid  stone, 
gable  above  gable,  climb  the  gradual  slope  to  the  foot  of  the 
castle  steep,  wearing  always  the  proper  air  of  immemorial 
association  with  the  noble  ruin  rising  above  their  furthest 
limit  that  one  would  expect. 

Warkworth  castle,  though  not  a  great  deal  of  the  building 
we  now  see,  existed  as  a  fortress  long  before  Edward  the 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES     37 

Third  granted  it  to  the  Percies.  Its  stormy  record  of  Scottish 
repulse  and  capture,  under  successive  Claverings  ;  its  partial 
destruction  by  that  long-lived  Scottish  scourge  of  North- 
umberland, William  the  Lion,  its  occupation  by  King  John 
and  Edward  the  First,  are  significant  of  its  importance.  The 
castle  and  Manor  were  given  to  that  valiant  Henry  Percy 
who,  it  will  be  remembered,  took  such  a  lead  in  the  battle  of 
Neville's  Cross,  while  the  king  was  fighting  at  Crecy,  and  the 
grant  was  in  lieu  of  salary  for  his  services  and  expenses  as 
Warden  of  the  Marches.  Both  he  and  his  son,  the  "  parvus 
miles,"  made  Warkworth  their  chief  headquarters,  and  both, 
strange  to  relate,  died  here  peacefully  in  their  beds.  It  was 
from  here,  too,  that  Hotspur  and  his  father,  the  first  earl, 
flouted  Henry  of  Bolingbroke,  and  down  this  long  street, 
and  over  the  predecessor  of  the  present  bridge,  the  former, 
with  his  eighteen  hundred  invincible  archers,  had  marched  to 
Homildon  fight,  and  a  little  later  to  his  death  on  Haytely 
field  at  Shrewsbury.  Here,  too,  is  laid  the  scene  in  the  first 
part  of  Shakespeare's  Henry  the  Fourth,  where  Hotspur's  wife 
Kate  tries  to  worm  out  of  him  the  secret  of  those  mood}' 
humours,  and  those  restless  nights,  which  led  to  the  cataclysm 
at  Shrewsbury  and  ended  there  for  good. 

"  Thy  spirit  within  thee  has  been  so  at  war, 
And  thus  hath  so  bestirred  thee  in  thy  sleep, 
That  beads  of  sweat  hath  stood  upon  thy  brow, 
Like  bubbles  in  a  late  disturbed  stream  : 
And  in  thy  face  strange  motions  have  appeared, 
Such  as  we  see  when  men  restrain  their  breath 
On  some  great  sudden  haste.     O,  what  portents  are  these  ? 
Some  heavy  business  hath  my  lord  in  hand, 
And  I  must  know  it,  else  he  loves  me  not.  .  .  . 
Away  !  Away  !  you  trifler  (cries  Hotspur)  : 

This  is  no  world 

To  play  with  mammets  and  to  tilt  with  lips : 
We  must  have  bloody  noses  and  cracked  crowns, 
And  pass  them  current  too." 

While   the   second   part   of  the   play  opens  at   Wark- 
worth again,  where  the  old  earl,  detained  by  a  sickness — 


38   THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

feigned,  so  said  his  enemies — received  the  news  of  Hotspur's 
death. 

It  was  after  this  that  the  earl  started  from  Warkworth 
with  several  thousand  men  to  avenge  his  son,  but  with  means 
quite  inadequate  to  so  belated  and  formidable  a  venture, 
surrendered  to  the  king  at  York,  was  tried  and  somewhat 
generously  pardoned  by  Henry,  only  to  rise  later  and  meet 
the  fate  he  certainly  deserved.  Warkworth  was  besieged 
during  this  second  rising  by  Henry,  with  a  large  force,  and 
though  gallantly  defended  by  one  of  the  CresswelPs,  was  at 
last  intimidated  to  a  capitulation  by  Henry's  big  guns  play- 
ing on  the  walls.  This  is  said  to  be  the  earliest  effective  use 
of  artillery  in  an  English  siege,  though  it  was  still  almost  as 
dangerous  to  its  immediate  friends  as  to  its  foes.  One  of 
these  monsters  was  carried  hence  by  sea  later,  and  used  by 
Prince  Henry  against  Glyndwr  at  Aberystwith  castle.  It  is 
worth  noting,  too,  that  John  Hardinge,  once  Hotspur's  page, 
and  the  well-known  rhyming  chronicler,  was  afterwards 
Constable  of  Warkworth. 

The  castle,  like  that  of  Alnwick,  fell  into  decay  in  the 
time  of  the  Tudors,  and  during  the  long  absence  of  the 
Percies  in  the  south.  When  the  first  duke  reconstructed 
Alnwick,  on  the  return  of  the  family  to  the  north,  there  seems 
to  have  been  some  hesitation  as  to  which  of  the  two  castles 
should  be  made  their  headquarters,  Alnwick  being  finally 
selected  on  account  of  its  more  suitable  environment. 

The  castle  enclosure,  which  stands  finely  on  the  summit  of 
a  steep  above  the  Coquet,  covers  from  one  to  two  acres,  and 
the  lofty  walls  defining  it  are  still  fairly  complete.  The 
immense  keep  is  thought  to  be  the  work  of  the  first  earl,  in 
Edward  the  Third's  time,  and,  as  regards  its  exterior  at  any 
rate,  is  practically  original  and  intact.  It  is  a  prodigiously 
imposing  building  of  eight  lofty  clustered  towers,  in  the  form 
of  a  star  with  as  many  points,  a  narrower  rectangular  lantern 
tower  rising  some  thirty  feet  above  the  centre.  The 
interior,  which  was  doubtless  readapted  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  contains  a  fine  banqueting-hall,  with  musicians' 


ALNWICK,  WARKWORTH,  AND  THE  PERCIES     39 

gallery,  and  some  notable  windows,  and  both  a  general  and 
a  ladies'  reception-room.  Below  are  the  large  kitchens  with 
their  huge  chimneys,  and  beneath  again  vaulted  cellars,  where 
it  is  said  the  cattle  were  kept  when  enemies  were  about, 
according  to  ordinary  Border  custom. 

At  the  far  end  of  the  courtyard  is  the  ancient  barbican 
and  gateway,  of  date  long  prior  to  the  Percy  ownership,  and 
looking  it.  Here  the  couple  who  keep  guard  over  the  castle, 
and  produce  on  demand  the  keys  of  the  keep,  inhabit 
cavernous  and  vaulted  chambers,  built  by  Robert  Fitz-Roger 
in  the  reign  of  John.  Among  other  buildings  and  fragments 
in  the  turf-clad  courtyard  is  a  tower  of  the  same  date, 
standing  over  the  remains  of  a  chapel,  and  surmounted  by  a 
curious  bell-turret,  known  by  the  astounding  name  of  Crady- 
fargus,  anent  which — the  name,  I  mean — the  antiquaries  refuse 
even  to  theorize.  Near  this  is  the  Lion  tower,  fairly  perfect, 
and  on  its  face  the  sculptured  figure  of  that  noble  animal, 
wearing  a  collar  inscribed  with  the  crescent  badge  of  the 
Percies,  and  their  motto  of  "  Esperance."  Near  to  the  base 
of  this,  lying  on  the  grass,  is  a  large  round  stone  of  some 
celebrity,  and  the  subject  of  a  legend  of  the  buried-treasure 
type,  which  is  not  perhaps  worthy  of  narration.  The  ample 
foundations,  vaults,  arches,  and  pillar  bases  of  a  considerable 
church  make  a  great  display  on  the  turf,  and  represent  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  the  pious  intentions  of  some  former 
Percy ;  indeed,  there  are  no  less  than  three  places  of  worship 
within  the  walls.  The  shells  of  towers  at  three  of  the  four 
corner  angles  of  the  curtain  walls  complete  all  that  it  seems 
fitting  to  take  note  of  here  of  this  most  inspiring  monument 
of  feudal  and  Border  power, 

But  there  is  a  little  pilgrimage,  and  that  by  water,  which 
we  made  a  point  of,  for  it  not  only  belongs  in  a  sense  to  the 
castle,  but  it  leads  to  the  most  curious  piece  of  mediaeval 
handiwork  to  be  found,  probably,  in  all  England.  Intent  on 
this,  we  hailed,  as  directed,  the  better  half  of  the  resolute 
dame,  who  does  the  honours  of  the  castle,  and  descended  the 
steep  slope  below  in  his  company  to  a  boat,  moored  to  the 


40       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

banks  of  the  river.  Ensconced  therein,  we  were  propelled  up 
the  clear,  fast  gliding,  shallow  current  of  the  Coquet  between 
fringes  of  pendant  trees,  with  the  shadow  of  the  castle's  towers 
quivering  in  our  wake.  The  Northumbrian  does  not  readily 
unbosom  himself  to  the  stranger,  nor  is  he  in  the  least  like  an 
Irishman,  for  instance.  But  I  found  our  skipper  to  thaw 
quite  readily,  and  to  be  a  man  worth  knowing,  and  withal 
of  resourceful  imagination.  It  was  late  on  in  a  dry  season 
when  I  visited  Warkworth,  and  the  clear  pebbly  bottom  of  a 
river,  that  all  my  life  I  had  heard  so  much  of,  and  had  so 
recently  made  acquaintance  with  in  its  lusty  and  beauteous 
youth,  turned  my  thoughts  and  inquiries  naturally  to  the 
salmon  and  their  doings  in  the  past  season.  Our  boatman's 
report  was  wholly  lugubrious,  but  in  the  previous  year  he 
declared  with  regretful  fervour  he  could  hardly  row  his  fares 
up  the  river  or  get  his  oars  through  the  water  for  the 
abundance  of  the  fish — bull  trout  and  salmon.  The  river,  in 
short,  was  "  stiff  with  them."  After  all,  there  is  something  of 
the  Celt  left  even  in  Northumbria. 

But  there  was  no  such  interesting  impediment  to  our 
pleasant  and  all  too  short  progress  on  this  occasion.  For  in 
ten  minutes  we  were  landed  at  the  foot  of  a  red  freestone 
cliff  overhung  with  verdure,  and  from  the  margin  of  the  river 
were  conducted  up  a  dozen  steps  cut  in  the  rock.  At  the 
head  of  this  a  round  headed  doorway  leads  us  through  a  small 
seated  porch  into  a  cave  twenty  feet  by  seven,  cunningly 
wrought  into  the  form  and  semblance  of  a  chapel  some  six 
centuries  ago.  At  the  east  is  a  small  altar  with  a  recess 
behind  it,  while  beneath  a  two-light  window  adjoining  it  is 
the  rude  and  worn  figure  of  a  recumbent  female,  at  whose  feet 
a  male  figure  watches,  with  his  head  resting  on  one  hand  and 
the  other  across  his  chest,  the  whole  attitude  eloquent  of 
despair.  The  roof  is  beautifully  vaulted  with  central  bosses, 
and  supported  by  short  columns  hewn  out  of  the  solid  rock. 
Within  again,  and  lighted  by  a  carved  window  from  the  outer 
chapel,  is  an  inner  one  of  ruder  design,  and  thought  to  be  of 
slightly  earlier  date,  but  fitted  with  an  altar,  worn  into  the 


ALNWICK,   WARKWORTH,   AND  THE   PERCIES     41 

semblance  of  a  seat.  A  third  chamber,  supposed  to  have 
been  a  dormitory,  opens  from  this  with  a  wide  aperture  at 
the  end  looking  up  the  river.  Over  the  doorway  of  the  inner 
chapel  is  a  worn  shield,  on  which  may  be  just  deciphered  a 
cross,  a  crown,  and  a  spear.  Over  that  of  the  outer  chapel 
is  a  Latin  inscription,  signifying,  "  My  tears  have  been  my 
meat  day  and  night."  Immediately  beneath  the  cliff  con- 
taining these  unique  remains  of  a  pious  recluse,  and  the 
memory  of  a  reputed  tragedy,  is  a  monkish  cell  of  hewn  stone 
and  much  later  date :  a  square  building,  now  quite  ruinous, 
but  originally  of  t^o  stories  with  adjacent  outhouses,  of  which 
the  remains  may  still  be  traced.  This  building,  if  standing 
by  itself,  would  enjoy  some  notoriety,  but  as  we  know  all 
about  it  from  the  Percy  records,  and  it  is  of  fifteenth-century 
date,  it  figures  here  rather  as  an  accessory  to  the  cavernous 
sanctuary  above,  which  fairly  exudes  mystery  and  legend. 
Indeed,  that  weird  age-worn  image  of  a  grief-tormented 
warrior  hermit  gazing  at  the  dead  lady  in  the  heart  of  a  free- 
stone cliff,  and  on  the  verge  of  a  romantic  stream,  is  surely  a 
thing  by  itself ;  a  spectacle,  one  would  have  thought,  to  sober 
the  most  exuberant  beanfeaster.  But  it  hasn't,  for  his 
northern  equivalent  has  left  his  accursed  name  graven  freely 
on  the  very  innermost  sanctuary,  though  he  will  do  so  no 
more.  But  the  adjacent  shrine  shares,  at  any  rate,  the 
respect  for  the  older  one  cherished  by  the  Percies,  since  the 
particulars  of  its  endowment,  in  cow  pasture,  fish,  and  other 
privileges,  which  they  settled  on  its  occupant  to  say  masses 
in  the  rock-hewn  sanctuary  above,  is  preserved  in  their 
archives.  I  am  not  sure  that  I  myself  feel  particularly  grate- 
ful to  an  eighteenth-century  rhymer,  even  to  an  eminent 
divine  who  has  earned  everybody's  gratitude  as  a  collector, 
for  putting  the  local  legends  of  such  a  stirring  relic  as  this 
into  many  pages  of  extremely  common-place  jingle.  But 
Bishop  Percy  has  constituted  himself  the  literary  patron  of 
this  sacred  and  romantic  spot,  and  the  local  handbooks  print 
the  whole  dozen  or  so  pages  of  his  metrical  narrative  in  extenso. 
The  excellent  bishop  has  earned  some  well-deserved  fame 


42       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

by  his  zeal  for  anecdotes  and  for  Border  ballads.  One  must 
admit,  however,  that  their  incomparable  spirit  and  racy 
vigour  finds  slight^  echo  in  their  reverend  editor's  occasional 
paraphrases  or  supplementary  poems,  and  one  drops  with 
a  gasp  from  Kinmount  Willie  or  Jock  o'  the  side  to  the 
"  Hermit  of  Warkworth." 

The  bishop  was,  in  fact,  a  southerner,  the  son  of  a  grocer, 
and  of  a  line  of  respectable  tradesmen  in  Worcester  and 
Bridgenorth.  Going  to  Oxford  he  won  a  Fellowship,  and  held 
a  college  living  in  Northamptonshire  for  thirty  years.  While 
here  his  antiquarian  tastes  and  studies  resulted  in  the  publica- 
tion of  the  "  Percy  reliques,"  followed  by  other  less  enduring 
publications.  He  married  his  two  daughters  and  only  sur- 
viving children  extremely  well  in  the  neighbourhood.  Still, 
he  is  quite  a  personage  in  Northumbrian  lore,  though,  after 
being  Dean  of  Carlisle  for  a  brief  period,  he  proceeded  to 
Ireland,  where  he  held  the  bishopric  of  Dromore  for  the  last 
thirty  years  of  his  life,  and  appears  to  have  really  lived  in  it, 
not  in  Bath  or  London,  like  so  many  of  his  Irish  episcopal 
brethren.  A  venial  foible  of  the  bishop's  was  to  connect  him- 
self by  descent  with  the  great  Northumbrian  house.  He 
succeeded  in  doing  this  to  his  own  entire  satisfaction  and 
that  of  a  good  natured  or  indifferent  world  in  no  mood  to 
be  critical,  particularly  when  a  persona  grata,  well  placed 
and  well  married,  was  concerned.  The  experts,  however,  do 
not  appear  to  have  been  wholly  convinced.  But  Goldsmith 
introduced  this  aspirant  for  full  Percy  honours  to  the  duke  of 
his  day,  the  Smithson  one,  who  made  him  his  chaplain  and 
blessed  him,  and  gave  him  every  facility  in  his  endeavours  to 
shed  further  lustre  and  interest  on  those  brave  deeds  of  old 
in  which  the  Percies  were  so  much  engaged. 

But  the  old  legend,  anent  the  origin  of  the  Hermitage, 
commemorated  in  such  length  of  rhyme  by  the  bishop  Percy, 
runs  thus  wise. 

One  Bertram  of  Bothal  Castle  was  enamoured  of  a  fair 
daughter  of  the  house  of  Widdrington  named  Isabel,  who, 
after  a  not  uncommon  fashion  of  that  time,  and  like  another 


ALNWICK,   WARKWORTH,   AND  THE  PERCIES     43 

damsel  we  shall  hear  of  later,  despatched  a  gorgeous  casque 
to  the  love-sick  youth,  with  the  intimation  that  he  must  put 
it  on  and  do  something  worthy  of  her  love  before  she  bestowed 
it  upon  him,  or,  in  other  words,  to  make  as  many  fresh  widows 
as  possible  before  he  made  her  a  wife.  Bertram  was  feasting 
with  the  Percies  at  Alnwick  at  the  moment  when  the  helmet 
arrived,  and  they  jumped  at  the  pretext  for  a  raid  over  the 
Border.  After  considerable  diversion  there,  young  Bertram  got 
his  crown  very  badly  cracked,  and  was  carried  to  Wark  Castle 
on  Tweed.  Hearing  of  his  misfortune,  the  remorseful  lady 
set  out  to  make  atonement  by  nursing  the  stricken  hero.  She 
was  captured  on  the  way,  however,  by  another  suitor,  a 
Scottish  noble,  who  carried  her  off  to  his  castle.  Bertram, 
as  soon  as  he  was  able,  set  off  with  his  brother  in  search  of 
her,  the  two  taking  different  directions.  The  former,  in  time, 
found  his  way  to  the  abductor's  fortress  somewhere  in  the 
west,  and  as  he  drew  near  it  under  the  shadow  of  night  to 
take  a  preliminary  survey  of  the  situation,  espied  his  lady 
love  in  the  act  of  descending  from  a  window  by  a  ladder  held 
by  a  youth  dressed  in  Highland  costume.  Detecting  the 
lady,  as  he  thought,  in  the  very  act  of  faithlessness  to  himself, 
he  rushed  forward,  sword  in  hand,  upon  his  unknown  rival. 
As  the  weapon  descended,  and  too  late  to  hold  his  hand,  the 
girl  threw  herself  between  them,  and  received  a  mortal  wound 
in  her  breast.  She  had  just  strength  enough  to  cry  out  that 
the  supposed  Highland  youth  was  her  lover's  own  brother 
before  she  expired.  Her  distracted  murderer,  in  his  agonies 
of  self-reproach,  thereupon  withdrew  himself  from  the  world 
to  the  Hermitage  at  Warkworth,  which  he  fashioned  in  the 
cliff  above  the  Coquet  with  his  own  hands,  and  there  we  may 
see  him  still,  in  stone,  watching  in  an  attitude  of  penitence 
and  remorse  at  the  feet  of  his  early t  love,  whom,' in  the  heat 
of  blind  fury,  he  had  destroyed  with  his  own  hand. 

The  second  legend  is  of  later  date,  and  tells  how  Hotspur's 
son,  when  a  landless  refugee  in  Scotland,  found  means  to  form 
reciprocated  attachment  to  a  daughter  of  the  Nevilles,  the 
rival  Marcher  House  on  the  western  side  to  his  own  and  his 


44       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

father's  foe,  and  how  they  were  secretly  married  at  the 
Hermitage  by  the  priest  in  charge.  That  they  were  openly 
married  afterwards  when  young  Percy  had  come  to  his  own 
again  is  an  historical  fact.  What  truth  there  may  be  in  the 
earlier  business  is  not  for  me  to  say,  but  tradition  is  perhaps 
more  suited  to  one's  mood  in  a  spot  like  this  than  hard  fact. 


CHAPTER  III 
EMBLETON    BAY 

ON  that  larger  and  altogether  more  attractive  half  of 
the  Northumbrian  coast,  stretching  northward  from 
Wark worth  and  Aln mouth,  there  are  several  villages  which 
have  quite  recently  awoke  to  find  themselves,  if  not  famous, 
at  any  rate  much  sought  after  by  holiday-makers,  and  scarcely 
able  to  keep  pace  with  the  modest  tide  of  their  waxing  popu- 
larity. For,  save  at  Alnmouth,  where  two  or  three  terraces 
of  Victorian  villas  suggest,  at  any  rate,  his  blighting  finger  at 
the  edge  of  a  not  unpicturesque  townlet,  the  jerry-builder 
appears  to  have  gained  but  scant  footing  on  this  coast. 
Whether  the  landowners  are  too  many  for  him,  or  whether 
the  adamantine  whinstone,  that  is  the  chief  local  building 
material,  presents  too  solid  terrors,  I  do  not  know ;  for  a 
summer  lodging-house  calculated  to  stand  a  siege  would 
obviously  not  pay  good  interest  on  the  outlay.  I  am  not 
prepared  to  say  that  the  force  of  ancient  habit  is  so  strong 
that  the  Northumbrian  still  erects  his  dwellings  with  an  eye 
on  the  Scottish  border,  but  he  keeps  it,  at  any  rate,  on  his 
heirs,  and  his  handiwork  is  at  least  not  likely  to  blow  away ; 
so  the  August  visitors  who  affect  this  coast  have  mainly 
accommodated  themselves  to  such  adapted  quarters  as  the 
modest  stone  tenements  of  fishing  villages  can  provide.  That 
these  are  held  sufficiently  adequate  in  the  matter  of  comfort 
is  evident  from  the  annual  competition  for  them,  which  is  now 
quite  brisk,  and  the  invaders  do  not  come  only  from  Tyneside 
but  sometimes  from  Yorkshire,  and  very  occasionally  from  far 
countries,  even  London  itself. 

45 


46       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

They  are,  after  all,  not  a  formidable  host.  Hamburgh, 
with  its  matchless  castle  and  excellent  golf  course,  squeezes 
in  the  most.  Holy  Island  harbours  a  few  score  who  are 
prepared  to  forswear  the  world  for  a  season  and  its  more 
definite  diversions  ;  while  in  the  still  smaller  places  to  the 
north  and  south  little  companies  of  knowing  pilgrims  contrive 
to  make  themselves  at  home,  and  lead  al  fresco  lives  upon 
the  glorious  sands  and  rolling  dunes  that  distinguish  this 
invigorating  and  otherwise  imposing  coast.  For  this  is  not 
the  unqualified  sand  and  the  unresisting  shore  of  the  East 
Anglian  levels,  but  everywhere  thrusts  out  cruel  jagged  reefs 
in  defence  of  its  curving  sandy  bays,  and  sometimes  quite 
savage  headlands  lifted  high  above  the  deep,  which,  together 
with  the  many  rocky  islets  out  at  sea,  stir  up  the  latter  in 
tumultuous  fashion  when  a  wind  sets  on  shore  and  make  a 
brave  sight.  The  water,  too,  is  of  such  texture  and  colour  as 
one  only  looks  for  on  rock-bound  coasts.  It  seems  here  to 
mingle  in  no  way  with  the  sand,  or  ever  gather  from  it  that 
yellow  tinge  which  one  associates  with  sandy  shores,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  is  radiant  with  transparent  greens  and  blues 
such  as  surge  around  the  coasts  of  Cornwall  or  Pembroke. 
Why  this  is  I  know  not,  unless  it  be  that  the  sand,  in  colour 
a  deeper  gold  than  to  the  southward,  is  more  gritty  and  has  no 
mixture  of  mud,  and  that  there  is  everywhere  more  rock. 

All  of  these  frequented  seashore  villages  are  within  four 
miles  of  the  main  line.  Embleton,  the  chief  of  the  minor 
ones,  if  we  may  venture  thus  to  classify  it,  is  less  than  two 
from  Christon  Bank  Station,  and  but  half  a  mile  from  its 
own  bay,  which  gives  it  such  modest  but  deserved  popularity 
as  it  enjoys.  I  planted  myself  here  early  in  July  before  com- 
petition had  commenced,  not  on  account  of  its  bay,  delightful 
though  it  be,  nor  because  I  wished  to  play  on  its  sands,  but 
for  strategical  reasons,  if  the  word  be  permissible.  In  any 
case,  it  is  a  very  typical  fragment  of  East  Northumberland, 
and  is  eight  miles  north  of  Alnwick.  If  you  travel  there  by 
road  you  will  find  yourself  approaching  it  over  gentle  gradients 
through  grass  farms  of  rectangular  fields  and  capacious  stone 


EMBLETON  BAY  47 

homesteads,  and  enjoying  wide  prospects  to  the  westward  of 
neighbouring  hills  and  distant  mountains.  Embleton  is 
merely  a  great  sea-coast  parish,  with  two  picturesque  out- 
lying fishing  hamlets,  set  near  the  rocky  horns  of  its 
capacious  bay ;  but  it  enjoys  some  distinction,  on  several 
accounts.  It  possesses,  for  one  thing,  an  interesting  and 
ancient  church,  not  so  common  a  property  in  war-wracked 
Northumbria  as  in  Suffolk  or  Northamptonshire,  and  one  of 
the  three  or  four  pele  tower  vicarages  of  the  county.  These 
two,  the  church  and  vicarage,  stand  adjacent  within  a  generous 
and  bowery  sanctuary,  while  a  tall  screen  of  elm  and  ash  trees 
shut  them  off  from,  perhaps,  the  ugliest  village,  qua  village, 
in  rural  Northumberland — at  any  rate,  the  ugliest  I  have  seen. 
But  this,  after  all,  is  only  a  matter  of  a  single  street,  extend- 
ing, perhaps,  for  a  single  furlong,  which  is  really  of  little 
consequence,  as  one  does  not  go  North  for  village  archi- 
tecture, though  here  and  there,  as  we  shall  see,  one  is 
pleasantly  surprised.  Many  Northumbrian  villages,  again, 
lie  handy  to  a  stone  quarry,  or  a  small  coal  mine,  of  no 
consequence  in  the  landscape,  but  which  set  a  social  tone 
wholly  adverse  to  an  aesthetic  atmosphere.  The  delver  in 
coal  or  stone,  in  the  North  at  any  rate,  prefers  a  greyhound 
and  a  beefsteak,  to  roses,  hollyhocks  and  whitewash,  and 
there  is  a  small  quarry,  nay  two,  adjacent  to  the  village 
whose  half  hundred  or  so  employees  would  be  quite  sufficient, 
I  imagine,  to  obscure  such  impulse  to  homely  grace  as  the 
agricultural  labourer,  even  in  Northumberland,  is  possessed 
of.  The  Embleton  quarryman  would  appear,  at  any  rate,  to 
have  little  taste  for  domestic  joys,  if  we  may  judge  by  the 
constancy  with  which  he  repairs  in  force,  during  his  idle 
hours,  to  a  commanding  position  on  the  village  street,  and 
there  discourses  interminably  of  unprofitable  nothings,  often 
far  into  the  night,  and  always  in  accents  neither  soft  nor  low. 
I  must  not  be  unjust,  even  to  the  appearance  of  a  place 
where  I  have  spent  so  many  pleasant  weeks,  and  to  which 
many  discriminating  folk,  other  than  natives,  are  devoted  ; 
for,  after  all,  it  is  only  this  heart,  this  interior  of  Embleton, 


48       THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

that  is  so  defiantly  unlovely  and  austere.  For  when  you 
have  mounted  the  short  ascent  to  the  rear  of  the  village,  and 
turned  your  back  on  the  unprepossessing  interlude,  you  will 
understand  why  it  amounts  to  nothing  in  the  eyes  of  the 
faithful.  These  last,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  mostly  quarter 
themselves  on  this  same  ridge,  where  local  enterprise  has 
provided  substantially,  if  not  aesthetically,  for  their  entertain- 
ment. For  here  is  a  most  delightful  seaward  outlook,  a  brief 
slope  of  green  fields,  and  beyond,  long  ranges  of  waving 
dunes.  Nor  are  these  thinly  clad  with  pale  and  straggling 
bents,  but,  waist  deep  in  bracken,  and  wrought  by  the  winds 
of  former  days  into  fantastic  shapes,  rise  to  quite  imposing 
heights.  Between  the  fern-clad  hills  you  may  see  the  waves 
curling  and  spouting  on  the  ragged  reefs  of  whinstone  that 
crane  far  out  into  the  deep,  or  falling  on  carpets  of  clean 
sand  and  of  a  ruddier  gold  than  any  known  to  me.  But  the 
pride  of  Embleton  bay  lies  in  its  southern  horn  two  miles 
away ;  for  here  an  upstanding  promontory  of  black  cliff, 
leaping  out  two  furlongs  seaward,  carries  on  its  spacious 
summit  the  still  ample  and  lofty  ruins  of  Dunstanburgh 
castle,  which,  for  dignity  of  pose,  shares  with  Bamburgh  and 
Harlech  a  proud  pre-eminence  among  our  mediaeval  sea-coast 
fortresses. 

The  barony  of  Embleton  was  quite  an  important  North- 
umbrian fief  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Simon  de  Montfort  once 
held  it,  and  was  apparently  a  frequent  visitor,  and  long 
remembered  in  the  county.  Indeed,  it  was  his  neighbour,  de 
Vesci  of  Alnwick,  who  brought  his  foot  back  to  Alnwick 
Abbey  after  his  death  at  the  battle  of  Evesham.  Later  on, 
Henry  the  Third  gave  Embleton  to  his  younger  son,  Edmund, 
Earl  of  Lancaster,  to  whom  succeeded  Thomas  of  the  same, 
who  built  Dunstanburgh  castle.  Bailiff's  accounts,  and  other 
records  of  the  barony  from  this  time,  are  extant,  and  shed 
much  light  on  the  social  and  economic  condition  of  a 
northern  country-side  at  that  remote  period,  as  well  as  at 
later  ones.  One  finds,  for  instance,  two-third  of  the  houses, 
and  a  mill  in  Embleton,  burned  by  the  Scots,  in  Edward  the 


EMBLETON  BAY  49 

First's  time,  while  after  his  son's  disaster  at  Bannockburn,  still 
greater  damage  is  done,  and  the  rent  roll  woefully  depreciated. 
Wheat  is  at  a  shilling  a  bushel,  a  very  stiff  price  indeed,  and 
equal  to  the  labour  of  a  man  for  twelve  days.  On  this 
account,  perhaps,  one  finds  the  bailiff  employing  hands  to 
weed  it ;  monstrous  high  farming,  one  might  think,  for  the 
fourteenth  century.  The  cost  of  shoeing  a  horse  all  round  is 
five  shillings,  an  enormous  sum,  being  the  price  of  sixty  days' 
labour !  Messengers  are  constantly  going  back  and  forth  to 
the  lord  in  the  South,  with  news  of  the  state  of  the  Scottish 
temper  and  intentions.  The  bailiff  goes,  too,  on  business,  and 
all  their  travelling  expenses  are  carefully  entered.  An 
auditor,  generally  a  knight,  comes  down  yearly,  and  puts  up 
in  the  Royal  house  at  Embleton,  receiving  fifteen  shillings 
for  his  five  days'  work  and  expenses.  The  lord  also  keeps 
a  boat,  that  brings  him  in  fifty  shillings  a  year  for  carrying 
goods  along  the  shore  for  his  tenants.  Licences  to  brew,  and 
of  course  the  corn  mills,  are  another  source  of  revenue,  while 
the  names  and  precise  rent  of  each  tenant  are  duly  recorded. 
Oxen  and  cows  are  purchased  at  six  to  four  shillings,  ewes  at 
one  shilling,  while  one  hundred  and  forty  of  these  last  are 
used  as  milkers. 

John  of  Gaunt  steps  into  the  barony  by  marriage,  and 
builds  largely  at  Dunstanburgh.  The  property  is  worth, 
roughly,  £150  a  year,  and  in  the  fifteenth  century  it  is  let 
to  a  middleman  for  £100,  a  special  clause  being  inserted  to 
protect  the  head  tenant  against  responsibility  for  damage 
done  by  the  Scots.  Rents  went  down  in  this  century  owing 
to  the  continuous  Scottish  wars.  Henry  the  Sixth,  who 
succeeded  to  the  barony,  writes  complaining  that  a  caracute 
formerly  worth  twenty-two  shillings  is  now  only,  worth  sixteen 
shillings,  and  urges  his  factors  to  put  rents  up  again,  but  they 
reply,  "  It  is  impossible."  Scotsmen  were  continually  settling 
in  Northumberland,  and  as  their  countrymen  were  responsible 
for  the  depression  in  land  it  is  proposed  to  tax  these  immi- 
grants by  way  of  compensation.  A  number  of  settlers  from 
the  extreme  south,  too,  seem  to  have  been  imported,  and  they 

E 


50       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

complain  that  they  have  come  three  hundred  miles  for  their 
betterment,  but  found  very  much  the  reverse.  One  may  well 
fancy  the  rustic  of  Berks  or  Bucks  getting  nostalgia  in  the 
Northumberland  of  that  day  !  Large  remissions  of  even 
reduced  rents  became  necessary  when  the  wars  of  the  Roses 
were  added  to  the  distress  of  the  Border  forays.  Those  men 
who  had  specie  hid  it  in  holes,  and  then,  as  so  often  happened, 
they  got  killed,  and  the  secret  died  with  them.  These  small 
hordes  have  frequently  been  unearthed  by  succeeding  genera- 
tions. The  bailiffs  at  the  time  were  often  men  of  good  family 
who  acted  as  captains  in  Border  wars,  the  muster  of  this 
particular  barony  being  about  fifty  men.  There  were  disputes, 
too,  about  digging  for  coal  between  the  tenantry  and  the 
Crown  bailiffs,  besides  other  matters,  and  the  constable  of 
the  castle,  having  now  no  concern  with  either,  and  probably 
not  much  to  do  in  peace  time,  sides  with  the  people,  and  there 
is  some  skirmishing,  one  party,  among  other  little  diversions, 
making  the  hay  crop  and  the  other  carrying  it.  It  is  curious 
to  read  that  in  the  sixteenth  century  nearly  all  the  timber  had 
been  wasted  away  by  reckless  usage,  and  also  that  the  sports- 
men of  the  country  killed  the  baronial  game,  so  the  bailiff 
complains,  as  if  it  were  their  own.  About  1730  the  old 
intricate  system  of  common  tillage  without  enclosures  and 
the  complicated  network  of  inconveniently  scattered  holdings 
and  grazing  rights  and  commonage  were  abolished  by  the 
consent  of  the  chief  tenants,  and  the  parish  divided  into  large 
holdings  and  fenced  somewhat  as  it  is  to-day.  I  have  ventured 
these  brief  notes,  not  because  this  locality  is  in  such  particulars 
an  exceptional  one,  but  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  will  serve 
as  well  as  any  other  to  illustrate  some  features  of  old  Border- 
life,  which  last  in  the  narration  usually  resolves  itself  into  an 
epic  of  martial  deeds. 

Embleton  church  is  among  those  of  distinction  in  a 
country  where  building  of  any  kind  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
except  for  personal  security,  was  not  an  encouraging  venture. 
Small  portions  of  an  earlier  Norman  church  are  embodied  in 
the  present  one,  which  was  raised,  or  partly  so,  about  the  year 


EMBLETON  BAY  51 

1 200,  and  somewhat  amplified  more  than  a  century  later, 
when  the  tower  was  rebuilt  and  the  aisles  enlarged.  It  con- 
sists to-day  of  tower,  nave,  and  side  aisles,  with  a  modern 
chancel  on  the  site  of  an  old  one.  The  arches  of  the  nave 
are  pointed,  and  spring  from  graceful  octagonal  piers.  Their 
hood  mouldings  display  the  nail-head  ornament,  and  terminate 
on  the  north  side  in  human  heads,  thought  to  be  original, 
while  above  is  a  clear-story  carrying  three-light  windows.  In 
the  north-east  of  the  nave  is  a  small  chauntry,  now  occupied 
as  a  family  pew.  The  windows  of  the  former,  restored 
apparently  on  the  old  models,  are  not  of  especial  interest. 
The  stained-glass  windows  in  the  modern  chancel  are  by 
Kempe,  and  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  that  distinguished 
statesman,  the  late  Sir  George  Grey,  of  Falloden,  which 
estate,  lying  partly  in  the  parish,  is  now  owned  and  occupied 
by  Sir  Edward  Grey,  the  present  Foreign  Secretary.  The 
memorials  on  the  walls  of  chancel  and  nave  mainly  relate  to 
the  Greys  of  Falloden,  and  the  Crasters  of  Craster,  the  latter 
being  owners  of  property  and  a  pele  tower  manor-house  in 
the  parish  time  out  of  mind. 

The  hoary  and  massive  porch  on  the  south  side  is  entered 
through  an  obtusely  arched  doorway  surmounted  by  the  figure 
of  an  angel  with  outspread  wings,  and  above  it,  again,  one  of 
those  decorated  cavities  for  the  reception  of  an  image  that 
have  now  been  tenantless  for  so  many  centuries.  In  the  porch 
itself  are  several  floreated  and  symbolically  inscribed  grave 
covers  set  upright  in  the  walls.  The  tower  of  native  whin- 
stone  of  three  stages,  and  carrying  curiously  wrought  battle- 
ments surmounted  by  crocketed  pinnacles,  is  distinctly  im- 
posing, rising  amid  its  girdle  of  trees  in  this  wide  open  and 
somewhat  woodless  playground  of  the  winds. 

The  vicarage  adjoining  the  churchyard,  and  within  the 
same  harbourage  of  trees,  has  grown  out  from  the  massive 
pele  tower,  where  in  olden  days  the  ex-Fellow  of  Merton,  who 
held  the  living,  and  many  no  doubt  of  his  neighbours,  could 
attempt  defiance  of  the  marauding  Scots.  This  rectangular 
clerical  fortress,  thickly  hooded  with  ivy  and  measuring  some 


52       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

forty  by  twenty  feet,-  is  of  three  stories  with  a  crenulated 
battlement  The  lower  story  is  a  basement  with  vaulted 
roof,  and  it  may  be  assumed  for  a  certainty  that  the  entrance 
was  originally  on  the  first  floor,  reached  by  a  movable  ladder, 
such  being  the  essence,  one  may  say,  of  the  pele-tower  system. 
It  was  of  itself  an  ample  and  roomy  parsonage  as  things  went 
then,  but  looks  a  strange  and  belated  neighbour  now  to  the 
cheerful  and  more  or  less  modern  habitation  tacked  on  it. 
The  connection  between  Embleton  and  Merton  has  always 
been  peculiarly  intimate  and  interesting,  and  none  the  less 
so  for  the  early  struggles  of  the  college  to  preserve  it  from 
the  unscrupulous  greed  of  mediaeval  magnates. 

Bestowed  together  with  the  chapel  of  Rock  on  the  Warden 
and  Fellows  of  Merton  in  1274,  "for  the  support  of  their 
scholars  and  the  increase  of  their  numbers,"  by  Edmund, 
younger  son  of  Henry  the  Third,  the  very  donor  endeavoured 
soon  afterwards  to  repudiate  his  gift,  and  appointed  a  man  of 
his  own  to  the  first  vacancy  in  the  teeth  of  the  college  nominee. 
The  prompt  resistance  of  Merton  to  so  powerful  a  shuffler, 
and  the  tenacity  with  which  they  battled  for  their  property 
for  sixty  years,  should  entitle  those  strenuous  dons  of  old  to 
the  undying  gratitude  of  their  successors,  which  no  doubt 
they  possess  to  the  full,  while  the  conflict  is  regarded,  I 
believe,  with  much  interest  by  students  of  church  history,  and 
may  be  briefly  related  without,  I  hope,  trying  the  lay  reader's 
patience  too  greatly. 

Earl  Edmund  then,  owner  at  the  time  of  the  barony  of 
Embleton,  appointed  his  man,  and  so  did  Merton,  both, 
strangely  enough,  rejoicing  in  the  name  of  Fileby.  Upon 
this  there  was  a  great  to  do  ;  the  Bishop  of  Durham  inter- 
fered on  behalf  of  the  college,  and  after  much  trouble  the 
Merton  Fileby  was  instituted.  Edmund's  son,  the  famous 
Earl  Thomas  of  Lancaster,  revived  forty  years  later  his 
father's  old  claim  at  the  first  vacancy.  The  struggle  now 
became  much  keener.  Merton  sent  their  proctor  to  the  north, 
but  a  terrorized  jury  of  Northumbrian  parsons,  more  frightened 
even  of  the  earl's  bailiff,  Thomas  Galoun,  than  of  the  earl, 


EMBLETON  BAY  53 

tamely  acquiesced  in  his  candidate,  one  Peter  de  Dene.  Even 
the  Warden  of  Merton  shrank  from  presenting,  though  the 
common  people  seem  to  have  been  on  the  side  of  the  college. 
So  the  intruding  Peter  was  inducted,  though  he  had  been 
and  still  was  a  pluralist  on  a  generous  scale  with  another 
living  and  a  canonry,  besides  being  chancellor  and  bishop's 
chaplain  at  York.  After  his  patron's  execution  in  1322  his 
good  fortune  made  him  an  object  of  persecution,  so  he 
bestowed  his  accumulated  goods  and  himself  on  St  Augustine's 
monastery  at  Canterbury,  where  both,  for  his  talents  were  con- 
siderable, were  welcome.  Tiring  after  a  while  of  such  seclusion, 
and  the  abbot  refusing  to  release  either  his  person  or  his 
goods,  he  conveyed  the  latter  and  such  plate  as  he  could 
carry  through  a  cellar  door  and  over  the  convent  wall  by  the 
help  of  outside  friends  with  ladders,  gaining  thereby  his 
freedom.  But  this  was  only  temporary.  The  monastic  hue 
and  cry  was  raised,  and  he  was  shortly  run  to  earth  and 
discovered  rolled  up  in  a  bundle  of  canvas  at  a  country  house 
in  which  he  had  taken  refuge.  The  recalcitrant  monk  was 
brought  back  with  ignominy,  locked  up,  and  treated  to  a 
severe  course  of  discipline.  This  seems  to  have  been  unjust, 
for  his  contention  that  his  initial  vows  were  conditional  was 
recognized  by  the  Pope,  who  issued  a  bull  in  his  favour.  The 
ex-vicar  of  Embleton,  however,  survived  his  troubles  but  a 
short  time,  though  immortalized  in  a  stained-glass  window  in 
York  Minister,  where  he  appears  in  full  length  in  the  act, 
apparently,  of  bestowing  his  benediction  on  two  attendant 
warriors  encased  in  chain  mail. 

Merton,  however,  had  all  this  time  been  pressing  forward 
legal  proceedings,  which  in  1327  terminated  in  their  favour, 
Edward  the  Third  ordering  the  Bishop  of  Durham  to  respect 
the  presentation  of  the  warden.  This  writ  was  issued,  pending 
a  claim  of  the  king  himself,  on  the  pretext  that  Earl  Edmund 
had  bestowed  the  living  without  a  royal  licence.  There  was 
then  another  great  hubbub.  The  college  authorities  protested 
with  all  their  might,  and  the  matter  was  eventually  settled 
by  the  payment  of  a  fine,  which  was  no  doubt  the  sole  object 


54,      THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

for  which  His  Majesty  had  raised  the  issue,  though  he  in- 
sisted, probably  for  the  sake  of  appearances,  on  retaining  the 
first  presentation.  To  make  all  things  safe  after  this,  the 
Papal  recognition  of  Merton's  claims  was  formally  secured, 
as  well  as  that  of  the  Bishop  of  Durham.  The  living  was 
now  converted  from  a  rectory  to  a  vicarage,  the  college 
henceforth  retaining  the  great  tithe  which  they  hold  to-day. 
But  even  now  there  was  not  to  be  peace  for  the  unfortunate 
fellows  of  Merton.  In  1340  Henry  of  Lancaster,  as  holder 
of  the  barony  of  Embleton,  seized  the  first  opportunity  to 
put  one  of  his  clerks  into  the  living.  Down  again  post  haste 
came  the  warden's  proctor,  and  standing  in  the  church  porch, 
proceeded  to  read  out  his  charter  of  possession.  Taking 
the  key  in  his  hand,  and  addressing  the  crowd  that  had 
collected,  among  whom  was  a  lawyer,  he  cried  repeatedly  in 
a  loud  voice,  "  Here  I  take  corporal  possession  of  this  church 
of  Embleton."  Then  the  earl's  bailiff,  the  old  obnoxious 
Thomas  Galoun,  whose  voluminous  accounts  are  still  extant, 
came  upon  the  scene  with  an  armed  following,  and  rudely 
bade  the  college  proctor  to  evacuate  not  only  the  church 
precincts,  but  Embleton  itself,  before  nightfall,  a  threat  the 
unfortunate  collegian  felt  bound  to  respect  "  in  great  anguish 
of  body  and  fear  of  death."  The  college  now  formally  pre- 
sented their  own  man,  William  de  Humberstan,  in  opposition 
to  the  tyrannical  earl's  clerk,  John  de  Bredon,  in  possession. 
But  even  the  Bishop  of  Durham,  on  being  appealed  to, 
proved  faint-hearted.  The  Archbishop  was  next  invoked,  and 
between  them  enough  seems  to  have  been  done  to,  at  any 
rate,  scare  John  de  Bredon  out  of  the  vicarage,  upon  which 
the  earl  immediately  nominated  one  Robert  of  Walkyngton 
in  his  place.  These  flagrant  proceedings  were  too  much 
even  for  those  days.  The  matter  ended  by  the  earl  giving 
up  all  claim  in  consideration  of  the  more  than  substantial 
sum  of  £400,  which  was  what  he  was  probably  after,  and  let 
us  hope  he  paid  Thomas  Galoun  a  handsome  commission. 
With  the  exception  of  a  little  breeze  with  the  Pope  in  1370, 
whose  nominee,  legally  instituted  under  special  circumstances, 


EMBLETON  BAY  55 

annexed  the  great  tithe,  and  another  with  one  of  the 
Nevilles,  who  seized  everything  in  a  fit  of  exuberance,  the 
Warden  and  Fellows  of  Merton  thenceforward  enjoyed 
Embleton  in  peace,  save,  of  course,  for  the  Scots,  who,  if 
they  respected  the  sacred  buildings,  respected  none  of  its 
accessories,  human  or  material. 

So  much  for  this  curious  story.  No  wonder  the  ancient 
Oxford  House  regards  its  links  with  the  parish  of  Embleton 
as  closer  than  common,  and  I  should  hope  every  Fellow  of 
Merton  considers  it  his  duty  to  make  at  least  one  pilgrimage 
in  his  life  to  this  leafy  sanctuary  and  its  pele-tower  parsonage, 
so  conspicuously  seated  amid  the  sweeping  pastures  by  the 
wild  Northumbrian  shore.  But  it  would  be  worse  than  un- 
pardonable so  to  forget  the  present  and  lose  one's  self  in  ancient 
history,  as  to  turn  out  of  the  pleasant  precincts  of  Embleton 
church  without  a  word  of  the  most  distinguished  divine  that 
has  probably  ever  occupied  its  pulpit.  To  all  my  readers 
Bishop  Creighton's  name  will,  I  should  hope,  be  fresh.  Some, 
I  dare  say,  have  read  his  life,  and  many  things  about  modern 
Embleton  contained  therein  that  I  have  neither  the  right  nor 
the  occasion  to  set  down  here.  One  feels  justified,  however, 
if  justification  were  needed,  for  dwelling  so  long  on  this  little 
bit  of  local  history  by  the  later  distinction  that  the  place  has 
acquired  through  its  connection  with  so  famous  a  churchman 
and  so  eminent  and  delightful  a  historian. 

Summer  comes  to  East  Northumberland  with  tardy  steps, 
and  spring  the  poet  Thomson,  who  hailed  from  close  to  the 
Northumbrian  Border,  would  surely  never  have  invoked  as  a 
"gentle  and  aetherial  minstrel,"  had  he  remained  at  home 
and  written  of  it  beneath  the  north  side  of  the  Cheviots 
instead  of  the  Marlborough  downs.  He  would  probably  not 
have  brought  himself  to  sing  of  the  first  of  the  seasons  at  all, 
but  have  begun  with  summer,  whose  suns  shine  here  with  at 
least  the  radiance  and,  of  course,  some  thirty  hours  a  month 
longer  than  those  of  the  south.  But  even  hereabouts  the 
sunshine  is  scarcely  sensuous,  if  invigorating,  nor  is  this  a 
rainy  coast.  Even  in  this  July,  when  friends  arrived  at  its 


56       THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

close,  quite  exhausted  with  the  continuous  heat  of  the  far 
South,  and  with  a  tale  of  railway  journeys  well-nigh  unbear- 
able, the  air  up  here  had  been  so  keen  that  I  was  quite 
thankful  my  days  had  been  active  ones,  and  should  have  often 
had  a  fire  at  nights,  but  for  a  weak-minded  dread  of  my  land- 
lady's scorn.  Autumn  is  the  period  when  East  Northumber- 
land comes  out,  and  challenges  comparisons  with  geographi- 
cally more  favoured  climes.  And  winter,  I  am  assured,  has 
no  particular  terrors.  But  the  spring  and  its  east  winds  even 
the  hardy  hind  speaks  of  with  unqualified  respect,  and  the 
more  sensitive  with  anathema.  One  can  well  fancy  it  whist- 
ling over  the  grey  sea  and  smiting  the  stone  villages  and 
farmhouses  set  on  the  crest  of  the  long  swell  that  slopes 
gently  inland,  with  pitiless  breath.  Indeed,  I  should  have  no 
occasion  for  fancy  or  for  local  tales,  since  I  myself  in  times 
remote  spent  two  or  three  springs  very  much  in  the  company 
of  the  elements  on  this  same  coast-line,  a  score  or  two  miles 
yet  further  north.  But,  then,  what  recks  one-and-twenty  of 
an  east  wind ! 

I  have  said  that  the  prospect  of  Dunstanburgh  Castle, 
rising  grim  and  rugged  amid  its  splendid  solitude  of  cliff  and 
sky  and  sea,  would  give  Embleton  something  to  live  for  if  it 
had  nothing  else.  No  road  leads  to  the  ruins  from  anywhere, 
which  is  all  in  its  favour.  The  way  thither  lies  by  the  shore, 
and  you  may  pursue  it  on  the  firm  sand  themselves,  or 
behind  the  barrier  of  fern-clad  dunes  they  have  cast  up  by  a 
winding  track  over  the  links — a  general  term  this  last,  by  the 
way,  that  the  southern  golfer  may  be  surprised  to  hear,  is 
very  much  older  than  the  sport  which,  for  obvious  reasons, 
became  identified  with  it.  Long  before  reaching  the  foot  of 
the  castle  steep  the  smooth  sands  come  to  a  violent  end  in  a 
waste  of  jagged  reef  and  a  chaos  of  detached  rocks,  where  the 
waves  with  but  slight  encouragement  growl  ominously. 
One  huge  fragment  of  limestone,  lying  partly  beyond  their 
reach,  enjoys  a  deserved  notoriety  for  its  striking  resemblance 
to  the  wreckage  of  some  man-made  structure.  A  once 
impassable  narrow  marsh,  now  drained  to  a  meadow,  meets 


EMBLETON   BAY  57 

this  wave-washed  litter  of  rocks  in  the  angle,  which  forms  in 
fact  a  cove,  whence  a  black  perpendicular  cliff  a  hundred 
feet  in  height  shoots  far  out  to  sea.  Where  it  meets  dry 
land  just  above  us,  the  precipitous  rock  changes  to  a  grassy 
slope  still  higher  and  scarcely  less  steep,  which,  curving 
inland  round  the  base  of  the  promontory,  makes  for  defence 
upon  the  landward  side.  Here,  looking  imposingly  down 
from  the  summit  of  the  escarpment,  is  the  Lilburn  tower,  with 
its  massive  corner  turrets  and  hundred  feet  of  six-foot  walls,  not 
greatly  shattered  by  the  storms  of  as  many  hundred  years, 
while  marshalled  around  its  base  on  the  slope  are  a  group  of 
slender  statuesque  basaltic  crags,  ten  to  fifteen  feet  high,  and 
curiously  suggestive  of  a  row  of  gigantic  warriors  guarding 
the  steep. 

On  the  top  of  the  promontory  ten  acres  of  sward,  gently 
trending  towards  its  wave-washed  point,  forms  the  interior  of 
this  once  immense  fortress,  of  which  some  five  hundred 
yards  of  curtain  wall  are  still  standing  in  whole  or  part. 
The  great  original  gateway,  erected  by  Thomas  of  Lancaster, 
surmounted  by  two  stories  and  flanked  by  lofty  towers,  faces 
the  southerly  of  the  two  landward  sides.  A  couple  more 
considerable  towers  and  a  smaller  one  yet  lift  their  heads 
bravely  at  other  points  of  the  same  still  almost  perfect  wall 
on  the  two  sides  fronting  the  sea.  The  northern  side  is  un- 
walled,  as  it  falls  sheer  into  the  water  for  the  space,  at  high 
tide,  of  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  yards,  and  from  the 
height,  as  I  have  said,  of  a  hundred  feet.  Here,  as  the 
promontory  begins  to  dip  travelling  seaward,  and  the  high 
grassy  plateau,  dropping  of  a  sudden  to  expanding  sweeps 
and  terraces  of  basaltic  rock  on  which  the  open  sea  breaks 
fiercely,  the  curtain  wall  is  carried  across  to  meet  the  further 
point  of  the  landward  wall,  just  where  it  is  guarded  by  the 
furthest  tower.  This  was  called  after  Henry  the  Sixth's 
queen,  Margaret,  who  landed  and  probably  stopped  here  just 
before  the  battle  of  Hedgely  Moor,  where  Ralph  Percy,  then 
the  occupant  of  this  castle,  it  may  be  remembered,  fell  in  her 
cause  "  with  the  bird  in  his  bosom."  Just  beneath  this  tower 


58       THE    ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

the  sea  draws  near  again,  and,  running  up  a  narrow  chasm  in 
the  rocks,  could  carry  a  boat  in  calm  weather  under  the  very 
walls,  suggesting  all  kinds  of  dramatic  possibilities  to  the 
imagination.  But,  after  all,  one  must  leave  it  to  the  artist's 
pen  or  brush  to  give  the  reader  some  idea  of  the  pose  of 
Dunstanburgh.  Turner  and  many  other  artists  of  note  have 
depicted  it,  while  Mr.  Freeman  declared  it  to  surpass  all  other 
northern  castles  in  the  grandeur  of  its  site.  The  north-east 
winds  hurl  the  waves  against  its  basalt  crags  with  prodigious 
fury,  flinging  the  stud  and  foam  all  over  its  many-acred 
interior,  uplifted  though  that  be,  and  driving  the  salt  spray 
high  against  its  much-enduring  towers.  I  have  been  privi- 
leged to  see  it  once,  thus  smitten  from  that  quarter  by  an 
autumn  storm,  the  rugged  towers  lying  darkly  piled  against  a 
gloomy  sky  upon  the  black  cliffs,  and  the  waves  shaking  their 
angry  crest  above  the  highest  ledges,  and  sweeping  inland  in 
blinding  blizzards  of  spray.  An  old  friend  and  whilom  vicar 
of  Embleton  pointed  out  to  me  a  spot,  at  least  two  hundred 
yards  within  the  castle  precincts,  where  he  was  once  struck  by 
the  scattered  crest  of  a  wave  driven  on  the  gale,  and  drenched 
to  the  skin.  But  that  particular  day  of  our  pilgrimage  was 
of  a  far  different  kind  indeed.  The  sun  was  benignant,  the 
seas  were  still  but  for  an  uneasy  growling  under  the  castle 
cliffs  that  no  elemental  serenity  seems  wholly  to  appease. 
We  lay  on  their  edge  where  no  de  Montfort  nor  John  of 
Gaunt  had  need  of  the  mason's  help  against  a  foe,  and 
watched  the  green  water  a  hundred  feet  below  sweeping  over 
transparent  pebbly  depths,  and  forcing  itself  through  a 
tunnel  at  the  base  of  the  cliff  that  some  freak  of  nature  had 
formed  for  the  chaunting  of  a  perpetual  dirge.  Leland  was 
here,  of  course,  and  remarks  in  his  curt  fashion,  "  Dunstane- 
borough  is  hard  on  the  se  shore,  it  stondeth  on  a  hy  stone 
rok,  the  castle  is  more  than  halfe  a  mile  in  compace  and 
there  hath  bene  great  building  in  it."  So  there  had,  and  the 
foundations  of  the  interior  buildings  and  somewhat  more  may 
yet  be  seen.  We  have  already  told  how  de  Montfort  saw  fit 
to  acquire  the  barony  of  Embleton,  of  which  Dunstanburgh 


EMBLETON  BAY  59 

was   then  but   the   natural   rock  fortress,  with  traces,  it  is 
believed,  of  ancient   occupation.     But  neither   de   Montfort 
nor  his  successor,  Edmund  of  Lancaster,  saw  cause  to  build 
and  entrench  themselves  upon  it.     The  latter's  son,  however, 
Earl  of  Lancaster,  Leicester  and  Derby,  who  so  harried  the 
Warden  and  Fellows  of  Merton,  found  an  excellent  reason, 
and  began  quarrying  stone  for  the  purpose  in  May,  1313. 
Dunstanburgh  is  in  one  sense  unique  in  story,  for  it  is  the 
only  border  castle  not  erected  against  the  Scots,  nor  did  it  even 
figure  much  in  Scottish  wars  like  those  around  and  behind  it. 
Thomas  of  Lancaster,  in  fact,  erected  it  rather  for  his  own 
security  and  greater  influence  as  an  opponent  of  his  hapless 
sovereign,  Edward  the  Second,  whose  favourite,  Gaveston,  he 
had  recently  put  to  death.     He  not  only  held  aloof  from 
Bannockburn,  but  is  actually   said   to  have  jeered   at  the 
defeated   monarch,   as  on   his   homeward   way    he    passed 
beneath  the  walls  of  the  earl's  castle  at  Pontefract.     Our  old 
friends,   William    Galoun,  in   his   character  of  steward  and 
political   henchman,   and  the  intruding  vicar  of  Embleton, 
Peter  le  Dene,  as  the  donor  of  a  pair  of  cart-horses,  busied 
themselves  in  the  work.      The  earl  was  fond  of  pageantry, 
and  seems  to  have  had  an  imagination.     It  is  said  he  was 
enamoured  of  Arthurian  lore,  and  had  dreams  of  rock-girt 
Dunstanburgh  becoming  under  his  inspiring  touch  a  kind  of 
Joyeuse   Garde.     But   the   noble  gate-house   (the  Dungeon 
tower)  was  the  only  portion  that  this  magnificent  individual 
was  able  to   complete  before  the  injured  king  turned  the 
tables  on  him,  and  cut  his  head  off  in  front  of  his  own  gate  at 
Pontefract.     After  a  period  of  royal  constables,  during  which 
more  or  less  building  went  on   forward,   Henry,   Duke    of 
Lancaster,  had  possession,  and  put  more  masons  to  work; 
but  in  1368,  when  John  of  Gaunt  comes  on  the  scene,  both  as 
owner  and  occasional  visitor,  substantial  additions  as  well  as 
repairs  were  executed,  and  the  entire  work,  both  what  we  see 
and  what  we  don't  see  to-day,  completed.  The  Galoun  family, 
who  were  still  stewards  in  1382,  seem   to  have   contracted 
habits  of  laxity  or  presumption,  after  the  way  of  old  retainers. 


60       THE  ROMANCE  OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

For  we  find  John  of  Gaunt  breathing  vengeance  on  his 
underling  for  keeping  the  castle  workmen  out  of  their  pay 
and  being  himself  in  arrears.  The  fortress  must  have  taken 
some  part  in  Border  wars,  if  only  as  a  refuge,  but  it  remains 
curiously  in  the  background.  In  the  wars  of  the  Roses, 
however,  it  was  besieged  in  1461  by  a  Yorkist  army  of 
10,000  men  for  seventeen  days.  Percies  had  been  constables 
for  some  time,  and  Dunstanburgh  surrendered  on  condition 
of  its  retention  by  that  Ralph  Percy  who  afterwards  went 
back  to  his  old  allegiance,  and  fell  at  St.  Albans.  After  the 
battle  of  Hexham,  two  years  later,  the  castle  was  carried  by 
storm,  its  then  captain,  John  Gosse,  beheaded,  and  its  captor, 
the  Earl  of  Warwick,  celebrated  the  feast  of  St.  John  the 
Baptist  within  its  walls.  This  practically  ended  its  martial 
career.  It  had  no  shelter  for  ships,  and  was  unavailable  for 
naval  enterprise  against  the  Scots.  By  the  time  of  Henry 
the  Eighth  some  of  its  lead  roofing  was  already  being  used 
for  the  official  building  at  Embleton,  always  the  beginning  of 
the  end  of  a  feudal  castle.  Elizabeth's  commissioners  con- 
demned its  already  despoiled  walls  as  an  unprofitable  object 
of  expenditure.  The  inglorious  function  of  supplying  the 
neighbourhood  with  building-stone  soon  overtook  it,  and  we 
may  be  thankful  to  the  splendid  workmanship  of  Thomas 
of  Lancaster's  builders  that  so  much  is  left  to  us.  For  it  is  held 
by  archaeologists,  as  a  matter  of  interest,  that  these  earlier 
buildings  have  outlived  the  later  ones  of  John  of  Gaunt,  and 
have  defied,  with  much  success,  both  the  hand  of  Time  and 
the  pick  of  the  despoiler.  It  has  passed  through  several 
hands  since  James  the  First  sold  it,  but  none  have  ever  felt 
an  impulse  to  adapt  or  restore  its  crumbling  walls,  or  to 
establish  themselves  on  this  surf-beaten  but  ample  promon- 
tory, with  renovations  of  either  Tudor,  Jacobean,  or  Victorian 
construction.  "  Dunstanburgh  abides,"  to  again  quote  Mr. 
Freeman,  "  as  a  castle  should  abide,  in  all  the  majesty  of  a 
shattered  ruin." 

A  walk  of  a  mile  or  so  southward  from  the  castle  over 
grassy  slopes  and  along  the  edge  of  dark  beds  of  whinstone, 


EMBLETON  BAY  61 

upon  which  even  a  smooth  sea  grumbles  fretfully,  brings  one 
to  a  small  gash  in  the  rocky  shore,  guarded  by  a  couplet  of 
islets.  Here  upon  either  steep  bank  of  this  rude  trough, 
into  which  a  brook  babbles,  is  set  the  fishing  village  of 
Craster,  a  type  of  several  others  on  the  Northumbrian  coast. 
Substantial  stone  cottages,  roofed  with  red  tile  or  slate,  firmly 
planted  on  long-trodden  irregular  platforms,  look  at  each 
other  but  a  stone's  throw  apart  across  the  narrow  gully.  The 
summer  sea  heaves  gently  up  the  little  cove,  slightly  lifting 
on  its  way  an  anchored  boat  or  two,  and  breaking  on  a 
diminutive  pebbly  beach,  where  other  brightly  painted  cobbles 
and  a  litter  of  nets  and  fishing  accessories  make  a  businesslike 
if  restful  picture.  The  two  hundred  or  so  individuals  who 
occupy  this  eminently  picturesque  and  wave-washed  hamlet, 
like  those  of  others  on  the  coast,  have  no  traffic  to  speak  of 
with  the  hinds  and  bondagers  and  day-labourers  who  till  the 
large  farms  that  lie  behind.  They  neither  marry  nor  are 
given  in  marriage  with  them.  Even  their  rendering  of  the 
Northumbrian  speech  is  slightly  different,  and  is  pitched  in  a 
somewhat  softer  key.  Their  isolation  from  the  landsman  is 
tolerably  complete  till  they  make  their  final  voyage  to  the 
distant  cemetery  of  Embleton,  which  has  succeeded  the 
crowded  churchyard,  where  farmer  and  quarryman,  fisherman 
and  hind,  have  at  length  to  disperse  with  time-honoured 
cleavages  and  all  lie  down  together.  Alien  steam-trawlers, 
however,  have  much  injured  the  fisherman  of  late,  and 
occasionally  he  finds  it  necessary  to  make  up  the  deficiency 
thus  caused  by  uncongenial  work  in  a  quarry.  The  fisher- 
man, in  his  hours  of  ease,  which  cannot  be  many,  stands  with 
his  hands  deep  in  his  fob  pockets  and  his  back  against  a  wall, 
surveying  his  native  element,  engaged,  no  doubt — and  well 
qualified  to  do  so — in  contemplation  of  the  secret  of  its 
intentions  and  of  its  recent  behaviour  as  it  concerns  himself. 
This  pose  of  his,  the  more  so  perhaps  from  being  myself  so 
little  of  a  mariner,  always  fills  me  with  awe  and  a  sense  of 
inferiority  to  a  rugged  individual  who  may  not  even  be  able 
to  read  or  write,  though  that  is  quite  irrelevant.  His  knowledge 


62       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

is  that  of  mysteries,  of  vast  skies  and  seas  and  depths  that 
appeal  to  any  one,  though  commonplace  enough  to  him,  and 
that  no  knowledge  of  the  dry  earth,  or  of  men  and  women, 
or  of  books,  get  one  any  nearer.  I  have  felt  the  same,  though 
by  no  means  at  such  a  respectful  distance  from  it,  in  the 
company  of  backwoodsmen  to  whom  absolute  illiteracy  is 
a  positive  gain.  Some  similar  respect  should  surely  animate 
the  laymen  in  the  presence  of  'the  despised  labourer,  that 
poorly  paid  (except  in  Northumberland)  tiller  of  the  soil 
whose  accomplishments  are,  or  were,  so  many,  and  whose 
knowledge  of  the  earth  is  so  intimate.  But  the  layman  does 
not  generally  know  enough  to  appreciate  him  in  this  town- 
ridden  country,  and  rates  him  as  the  lowest  of  respectable 
humanity,  and  always  below  a  man  who  spends  his  days 
lifting  a  lever  up  and  down,  or  twitching  a  bolt  backwards 
and  forwards,  and  his  evenings  at  a  third-rate  music  hall. 
Nay,  more,  if  he  have  himself  some  acquaintance  with  hedge- 
row flowers,  he  is  almost  inclined  to  rate  himself  higher  as  a 
countryman  than  the  inarticulate  aboriginal  steeped  in  the 
secret  of  a  thousand  visible  things  that  to  the  specialist  of 
the  hedgerow  are  meaningless  superfluities.  But  if  the  coast 
fisherman  holds  to  the  motto  that  it  is  "  better  to  marry  over 
the  midden,"  there  is  no  sign  here  of  physical  deterioration ; 
indeed,  how  could  a  degenerate  face  the  North  Sea  ?  The 
fisherman,  however,  will  court  along  the  coast  if  not  in  shore, 
and  bring  his  wife  home  in  a  boat,  which,  no  doubt,  saves  the 
situation.  Family  nomenclature  is  as  circumscribed  as  in  a 
Merionethshire  hamlet,  nay,  more  so,  the  two  patronymics  of 
Archbold  and  Simpson  absorbing,  I  am  told,  nearly  the  whole 
population  of  Craster.  The  green  sweep  of  turf-clad  whinstone, 
known  as  Craster  Heugh,  swells  gently  upwards  behind  the 
village  to  the  traces  of  a  British  camp,  and  on  a  fine  Sunday 
the  sea-going  Northumbrian  of  either  sex  and  every  age  may 
be  seen  displaying  their  finery  on  its  broad  sunny  slope 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  splash  of  the  sea,  but  still  with  an 
eye  on  it ;  domestic  groups,  where  embryo  mariners  roll  on 
the  turf,  and  lovers  sit  clasped  in  unabashed  embrace,  while 


EMBLETON  BAY  63 

the  ancient  salt  still  ranges  with  his  glass  the  watery  wastes 
he  will  no  more  adventure.  To  get  much  social  change  out 
of  the  Northumbrian  fisherman,  or  win  his  confidence,  is  an 
achievement  that  is  said  to  be  only  possible  after  about  two 
years  of  continual  residence,  and  the  exercise  of  more  than 
ordinary  tact. 

The  manor-house  of  the  township,  Craster  Tower,  lies  a 
short  mile  inland,  pleasantly  embowered  in  protecting  woods 
of  elm  and  ash  and  oak.  Its  interest  lies  in  the  large  battle- 
mented  pele  tower,  which  still  so  conspicuously  forms  the 
back  portion  of  the  house  that  was  built  out  from  it  in  later 
times.  The  Craster  family,  moreover,  have  been  seated  here, 
as  already  mentioned,  with  a  continuity  now  rare  in  England. 
The  tower  seems  to  have  been  built  about  1415,  a  period  of 
great  Scottish  activity  and  much  tower  raising.  But  the 
original  Craster  was  in  possession  of  the  manor  of  that  name 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  then,  and  Crasters  are 
there  still. 

A  mile  away  another  relic  of  the  pele-tower  period  sur- 
vives in  a  farm  house  known  as  Proctor's  Stead,  formerly 
Dunstan  Tower,  and  held  from  the  thirteenth  till  the  close  of 
the  seventeenth  century  by  the  Wetwangs,  armigers  of  small 
estate.  Duns  Scotus,  the  celebrated  fourteenth-century  school- 
man, is  firmly  held  by  Northumbrians  to  have  lived  here.  The 
Scots  also  claim  him,  but  the  others  would  seem  to  have 
some  advantage  in  the  fact  of  his  being  a  Merton  man. 

It  would  be  pleasant,  if  space  permitted,  to  follow  the 
rugged  curving  coast  to  Alnmouth,  noting  by  the  way  the 
fine  basaltic  columnar  rocks  at  Cullernose,  passing  the  well- 
wooded  parklands  of  Howick,  Lord  Grey's  seat,  and  the 
little  fishing  hamlet  of  Boulmer,  a  famous  old-time  haunt 
of  smugglers  acting  in  concert  with  the  lawless  horsemen  of 
the  Border  dales,  and  much  celebrated  in  Wilson's  tales  of  the 
Border.  Boulmer  has  all  the  picturesque  character  and  the 
same  social  and  architectural  qualities  as  Craster,  and,  indeed, 
the  same  number  of  souls,  just  two-thirds  of  whom,  I  am 
told,  are  Stephensons  or  Stantons.  Making  for  the  same 


64       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

point  by  the  shore  road,  the  pilgrim  in  this  unsheltered  land 
would  find  himself  anon  among  grateful  avenues  of  ash  and 
oak  and  beech,  the  fringe,  in  short,  of  the  Howick  woodlands. 
He  would  pass  through  the  village  of  Long  Houghton,  which 
boasts  an  extremely  interesting  early  Norman  church,  enclos- 
ing a  good  deal  of  a  still  earlier  building.  He  would  also  pass 
through  Lesbury,  one  of  the  prettier  villages  of  Northumber- 
land ;  for  its  one-storied  freestone  cottages  are  pleasantly 
disposed  among  roomy  gardens,  not  only  suggesting  a  watch- 
ful eye  in  their  erection,  but  happily  disposed  along'the  brink 
of  a  wooded  dene,  through  which  the  Aln  tumbles  under 
the  arched  stone  bridge  by  which  the  highway  spans  it.  But 
this  is  almost  under  the  shadow  of  Alnwick  on  the  one  hand, 
and  within  sight  of  the  tidal  reaches  of  Alnmouth  on  the 
other,  and  it  will  profit  little  to  pursue  this  mere  enumeration 
of  pleasant  places  in  which  we  may  not  linger. 

A  little  trout  stream,  known  as  the  Embleton  burn,  born 
somewhere  up  in  the  inland  moors,  cuts  its  tortuous  way 
through  the  wide  low-lying  grass  lands  of  the  old  barony, 
burying  itself  in  woody  denes  and  hurrying  over  rocky 
channels,  and  retaining  the  spirit  of  its  moorish  origin  till 
it  slips  over  the  sands  at  the  very  centre  of  the  bay.  This, 
indeed,  is  the  way  of  all  these  burns  that  run  through  this 
Northumbrian  low  country  in  such  numbers  to  the  sea.  They 
might  well  sulk  amid  the  ox-pastures  and  wheat  fields,  and 
degenerate  into  weedy  sluggish  East  Anglian  drains,  the 
haunt  of  eels  and  bream.  But  they  choose  the  better  part, 
and  urge  their  bright  way  over  mossy  rocks  and  stony 
shallow,  holding  their  own  store  of  small  sweet  trout  till  they 
actually  meet  the  sea.  A  foot  or  two  beneath  the  clean  sand, 
near  the  very  centre  of  Embleton  bay,  there  lies  a  rock  whose 
situation  has  now  happily  been  fixed  by  measurement,  as  it 
is  only  uncovered  at  long  intervals  by  the  wash  of  the  sea, 
and  then  by  the  same  movement  again  buried.  The  interest 
attaching  to  it  is  very  great ;  for  not  long  since,  while  exposed 
to  view,  some  rude  lettering  was  noticed  thereon  which  upon 
being  cleaned  revealed  the  famous  name  of  "  Andrea  Barton  " 


EMBLETON  BAY  65 

in  obviously  sixteenth-century  characters.  Now  Andrea,  or 
Andrew  Barton,  was  the  most  famous  sea  captain  of  the  Scot- 
land of  his  day,  which  was  that  of  Flodden.  He  was  the  most 
brilliant  mariner  and  daring  rover  of  that  new  navy  which 
James  the  Fourth  was  striving  to  create  at  the  dawn,  as  it 
then  seemed,  of  a  new  prosperity  and  civilization  for  the 
northern  kingdom  so  soon  to  be  quenched  in  three  hours  of 
a  summer  day  and  a  succeeding  century  of  gloom.  But  the 
name  of  Andrew  Barton  means  more  than  this,  for  his  death 
in  a  sea  fight  off  this  coast  was  one  of  the  two  or  three  pre- 
texts upon  which  James  the  Fourth  fought  Flodden.  He  was 
in  some  sort  a  Scottish  "  Drake,"  half  naval  officer,  half  pirate, 
and  had  unpleasantly  surprised  the  English  on  an  element 
where  Scotland  had  hitherto  counted  for  very  little,  either  in 
peace  and  war.  It  was  in  peace,  however,  before  Flodden 
and  in  his  character  of  a  £«#jz'-pirate  that  the  Howards  hunted 
him  down  and  killed  him  in  a  sea  fight.  King  James,  who 
was  completing  the  largest  ship  ever  built  at  Leith  for  the 
special  use  of  his  valiant  admiral  to  be,  rated  him  differently, 
and  the  grievance  rankled.  Whether  the  hero  himself,  or  a 
devoted  follower,  or  a  triumphant  foe,  carved  his  name  in 
this  lonely  bay,  which  must  have  been  familiar  enough  with 
the  sight  of  his  flag  sailing  southward  from  the  Firth,  we  may 
not  know.  But  some  rubbings  of  it  have  been  taken  even  if 
it  sees  the  light  no  more,  which  is  possible. 

The  links  of  Embleton  roll  their  mimic  fern-clad  mountains 
northward  to  the  further  horn  of  the  bay,  where  a  high  grassy 
headland  with  rock-ribbed  flanks  and  green  breast  looks  across 
to  Dunstanburgh.  A  pleasant  track  leads  thither,  tramped 
into  a  keen  sward  by  generations  of  fisher  folk  travelling 
between  the  coast  hamlet  of  Newton  just  beyond,  and  the 
parish  metropoles,  whose  uncompromising  outlines  on  the 
distant  ridge  one  gets  gradually  accustomed  to.  The  dunes 
of  Embleton,  as  others  on  the  same  coast,  appeal  no  doubt 
to  their  habitue's,  not  merely  for  the  picturesque  foreground 
of  summer  verdure  and  autumn  gold  that  they  provide  for 
the  gleaming  sands  and  changing  seas  behind,  but  for  the 


66       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

richness  of  their  flora.  Noticeable  above  all,  and  in  a  pro- 
fusion uncommon  I  fancy  to  such  places,  the  geranium 
sanguineum  makes  glowing  patches  of  colour  in  July  that 
quite  dominate  the  wild  vetch,  the  potentilla,  the  eye  bright, 
the  bedstraw,  the  wild  thyme,  and  all  the  other  modest 
denizens  of  seaside  commons.  Stray  bunches  of  bell  heather 
here  and  there,  too,  will  in  July  be  opening  their  earliest 
blossoms,  and  where  the  plough  of  the  farmer,  either  by 
nature  or  ancient  rights,  has  been  thrust  inland  for  a  greater 
space,  the  gorse  has  seized  upon  the  pastures  and  adds  its 
yellow  blooms  to  the  scene  and  its  sweet  scents  to  the  fresh 
and  fragrant  air.  The  wings  of  confiding  and  restless  lap- 
wings drub  overhead,  the  gulls  swoop  in  their  company  and 
feed  in  groups  upon  the  wet  edge  of  the  sands,  along  whose 
margin  the  diminutive  sandpipers  scud  in  long-drawn  flocks 
like  things  possessed. 

This  other  fishing  settlement  lies  snugly  planted  on  a 
broad  sandy  strand,  sheltered  by  Newton  Point  on  the  north 
and  a  long  stretch  of  reefs  and  rocky  islets  to  the  south  ; 
a  little  group  of  one-storied  cottages  built  in  three  sides  of  a 
square,  the  fourth  one  opening  to  the  sands.  There  is  enough 
room  here,  and  acres  to  spare,  for  the  gay-coloured  Berwick 
"  cobbles  "  to  lie  at  ease  in  periods  of  enforced  idleness,  and 
a  fine  stretch  for  the  hardy  offspring  of  these  hardy  weather- 
beaten  folks  to  sport  over,  while  their  mothers  and  their 
grandmothers  perch  betimes  with  their  knitting  upon  the 
dunes  above.  From  the  signal  station  on  Newton  Point 
is  a  noble  outlook.  The  black  cliffs  of  Dunstanburgh  craning 
seaward  with  their  load  of  hoary  towers  four  miles  away  shut 
out  the  south,  and  in  this  case  one  would  not  lift  the  barrier 
though  the  whole  east  coast  of  England  were  revealed  in  the 
process.  But  northward,  over  Beadnell  and  the  red-tilled  roofs 
of  more  fishing  hamlets,  the  mighty  crag  of  historic  Bamburgh 
stands  high  above  land  and  sea,  while  northward  again,  but 
at  some  distance  from  the  shore,  the  numerous  islands  of  the 
Fame  cluster  against  the  horizon.  Facing  inland,  if  the  sky 
be  reasonably  clear,  you  can  look  over  the  nearer  ranges  to 


EMBLETON  BAY  67 

the  clear-cut  masses  of  the  Cheviots,  that  are  in  fact  but  a 
dozen  miles  away.  No  great  liners  plough  these  northern 
seas,  but  there  are  no  lack  of  steamers  wending  their  way  to 
and  from  the  mouth  of  the  Firth  or  the  more  northerly 
Scottish  ports,  and  in  fair  weather  a  fine  sprinkling  of  fishing 
boats,  with  their  red  sails  and  their  wayward  courses,  altogether 
more  goodly  to  behold. 

Coastguard  stations,  like  lighthouses,  have  a  fascination  all 
their  own.  The  gleaming  whitewash  of  their  exteriors  seem 
to  sit  so  well  beneath  the  mast-rigged  flagstaff  on  the  green 
turf  and  against  the  blue  sea  ;  the  man-of-war  sort  of  cleanli- 
ness of  their  interiors,  the  burnished  implements,  the  much- 
polished  arms  ranged  on  the  racks,  the  bronzed  and  roseate 
countenances  of  the  little  garrison,  and  the  usually  cheerful 
outlook  on  the  world  which  is  not  unnatural,  as  it  has  treated 
them  well.  For  the  coastguard,  unless  high  ambitions  have 
burned  within  him,  is  surely  the  most  fortunate  among  tars. 
I  turned  in  here  on  one  occasion  when  half  a  dozen  stalwart 
mariners  were  going  through  their  practice  in  flash  signals, 
one  of  them  operating  the  instrument  in  a  dark  alcove, 
framing  sentences  apparently  after  his  own  wayward  fancy, 
the  chief  of  the  station,  in  the  mean  time,  taking  note  in  a 
book  of  each  man's  performance  as  he  shouted  out  the 
enigmatical  readings.  These  cheerful  stalwarts  seemed  to 
combine  a  great  deal  of  entertainment  with  their  instruction, 
every  hesitation  or  mistake  being  hailed  by  the  others  who 
stood  behind  the  man  under  examination  with  boisterous  and 
good-humoured  comment,  the  best  incentive  doubtless  to 
exertion.  It  was  not  much  like  a  drill  sergeant  and  a  squad 
of  Tommies,  but  the  ways  of  sailor  men  are  different,  though 
no  doubt  as  efficacious.  With  ear  by  then  accustomed  to  the 
Northumbrian  dialect,  I  was  somewhat  taken  back  at  the 
enunciation  of  these  jovial  tars  as  they  shouted  out  each 
signalled  word,  without  an  "h"  between  them  all,  though 
they  were  on  their  best  behaviour,  so  to  speak ;  I  had  for- 
gotten for  the  moment  that  I  was  in  a  little  outpost  of  His 
Majesty's  service,  and  was  ashamed  of  myself  that  I  had 


68       THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

failed  to  locate  them  when  the  chief  told  me  afterwards  they 
were  all  Devonshire  men. 

The  village  of  Newton  proper  lies  beyond,  at  the  foot 
of  the  headland,  a  comparatively  umbrageous  agricultural- 
looking  place  with  two  or  three  farm-houses  set  among  the 
trees,  a  village  green,  and  a  small  manor-house,  occupied  by 
the  last,  I  believe,  of  the  great  clan  of  Northumbrian  Forsters 
to  retain  any  appreciable  acreage  of  Northumbrian  soil.  If 
time  should  be  an  object  you  may  save  some  by  returning  to 
Embleton  in  a  bee  line  across  the  fields,  but  these  field  paths 
in  Northumberland  have  not  the  Arcadian  significance  that 
the  name  would  suggest  in  Warwickshire  or  Sussex.  The 
Northumbrian  fields  are  not  straggling  enclosures  of  varied 
and  limited  acreage,  on  fortuitous  and  artistic  lines,  the  out- 
come of  a  long  and  peaceful  past.  Their  boundaries  are  not 
a  wealth  of  untrimmed  foliage,  the  dream  of  bird's-nesters,  the 
refuge  of  the  scattered  partridge  in  September.  The  attrac- 
tions of  the  North,  it  must  be  confessed  at  once,  lie  not  in 
these  details.  Northumberland  was  a  wasted  and  war-wracked 
country  long  after  the  southern  peasant  had  forgotten  what 
war  meant,  and  it  took  some  generations  after  peace  fell  on 
the  land  to  pull  itself  together  and  settle  down  to  serious 
agriculture.  When  it  did  it  went  straight  ahead,  first  in 
advance,  then  in  the  wake  of  the  incomparable  agriculturalists 
just  across  its  Northern  border.  Its  fields  are  great  rectangles 
of  a  most  unromantic  kind.  Its  thorn  fences  are  not  of  the 
uncompromising  trimness  of  the  Lothians,  to  be  sure,  but 
they  waste  no  ground  and  afford  small  refuge  to  the  birds  of 
the  air,  nor  often  show  any  great  wealth  of  bloom  or  blossom 
to  the  touch  of  what  in  the  South  would  be  May,  but  here  is 
June. 


CHAPTER  IV 
TO   CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM 

T  YING  back  from  the  Northumbrian  sea-coast  some  half- 
•*-*  dozen  miles,  as  already  noted,  and  running  nearly 
parallel  with  it,  is  a  conspicuous  range  of  hills.  They  spring, 
at  modest  height,  but  emphasized  by  bold  escarpments  of 
whinstone,  not  far  from  Berwick,  and  are  known  thereabouts 
as  the  Kyloes.  A  little  to  the  southward  they  rise  somewhat, 
and  at  the  same  time  expand  into  rolling  grouse  moors  and 
sheep  pastures,  contracting  again  as  they  approach  Alnwick, 
where  they  gradually  dip  to  let  through  the  river  Aln, 
flowing  eastwards  from  the  Lower  Cheviots  to  the  sea. 

A  pleasant  circuit  may  be  made  from  Embleton  by  taking 
a  northward  bound  train  to  Belford,  striking  from  there  across 
the  range  to  Chillingham,  which  nestles  under  its  western 
base,  thence  down  the  centre  of  its  widest  and  wildest  por- 
tions, and  dropping  again  to  the  seaboard  country  at  north 
Charlton,  and  so  home.  Though  I  have  traversed  much  of 
it  in  later  autumn,  when  the  heather  was  dead  and  the  ferns 
were  draping  the  hillsides  with  their  ruddy  gold,  I  would  fain 
recall  it  here  in  July,  when  the  heath  was  just  beginning  to 
blush  faintly  upon  the  moors,  and  the  scent  of  the  late 
Northumbrian  hay  crop  in  the  lowlands  was  in  every  breeze. 
Nor  for  my  part  would  I  take  the  train  to  Belford,  but  a 
cycle  rather,  and  go  leisurely  inland  to  the  great  North  road, 
and  thence  in  the  fresh  of  the  morning  follow  that  adamantine 
and  historic  highway  till  six  or  seven  miles  from  Embleton. 
The  road  from  Belford  crosses  it,  and  scales  the  hills  leading 
westward  to  Wooler  and  the  valley  of  the  Till. 

69 


70       THE    ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

At  this  date  I  presume  there  are  no  longer  any  belated 
beings  to  whom  the  cycle  only  suggests  a  perspiring  wight, 
scorching  with  humped  back  from  city  to  city.  The  motor 
is  now  the  fiend  in  a  hurry  and  the  terror  in  the  highway, 
compared  to  which  the  other  in  its  most  rampageous  period 
was  a  modest  and  harmless  thing.  The  very  urchins  in  the 
village  streets,  dusting  themselves  like  a  covey  of  partridges, 
scarcely  condescend  to  scatter  at  the  warning  bell,  while  the 
full-quivered  matron  at  the  cottage  door  eyes  you  almost  with 
tenderness  as  a  reminder  of  peaceful  days  gone  by,  which 
they  did  not  sufficiently  appreciate. 

Many  years  ago,  just  as  the  safety  bicycle  was  approach- 
ing its  social  promotion  and  the  Battersea  Park  furor,  I 
remember  a  letter  to  a  leading  Weekly  from  an  altogether 
delightful  vulgarian,  who  bitterly  complained  that  the  nerves 
of  his  dogs  were  being  constantly  tried  as  they  accompanied 
him  in  his  walks  about  the  country  roads.  The  question  of 
life  and  limb  was  not  raised,  as  the  maddest  scorcher  never 
courted  a  collision  with  a  dog  ;  it  was  only  the  interference 
with  their  playful  gambles  that  raised  their  master's  choler. 
But  the  point  of  this  incredible  person's  complaint  was  not 
so  much  his  opinion  that  cycles  should  on  this  account  be 
tabooed,  but  his  further  argument  in  support  of  so  drastic  a 
measure,  namely,  that  "the  county  families  did  not  use 
them."  In  less  than  a  year,  when  his  faithful  and  harassed 
pack  were  scattering  before  the  wheels  of  peers  and  baronets, 
his  point  of  view  must  have  been  dreadfully  upset.  He  was 
obviously  a  recent  recruit  to  the  ranks  of  society,  and  wrote 
from  a  very  home  county  indeed,  where  such  recruiting  has 
been  going  on  so  merrily  and  for  so  long  a  time  that  there  is 
almost  nothing  of  the  genuine  article  left.  What  would  our 
ingenuous  friend  say  now,  when  dogs  and  even  a  proportion 
of  cyclists  themselves  have  been  practically  driven  from  the 
road,  unless,  indeed,  for  the  consolation  that  what  he  con- 
ceived to  be  county  families  were  conspicuous  offenders. 
The  humble  cycle  has  now  adapted  itself  wholly  to  rural  uses 
of  the  less  dashing  kind.  It  leans  frequently  against  the 


TO  CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM  71 

wayside  gate,  while  its  owner  looks  round  his  cattle  on  the 
further  side.  It  lies  in  the  shade  of  a  fence,  waiting  the  close 
of  the  road-mender's  and  even  the  stone-breaker's  daily  toil ; 
it  is  a  regular  feature  at  market  or  stock  auction,  though  for 
many  social  and  sporting  purposes  it  remains,  and  must 
remain,  humanly  speaking,  an  indispensable  convenience  to  a 
great  number  of  people.  Lastly,  for  those  who  have  a  fancy 
for  seeing  something  of  their  own  country  in  independent 
leisurely  fashion  it  has  no  equivalent,  both  on  its  own  account 
and  for  getting  to  good  points  for  hill  walking. 

After  crossing  the  main  line  near  Christen  Bank  station 
one's  further  progress  westward  to  the  great  North  road  is  by 
devious  and  pleasant  ways,  that  skirt  for  a  space  the  luxuriant 
woods  of  Falloden,  which  encircle  one  of  the  very  few  red- 
brick country  houses  of  consequence  in  Northumberland. 
Falloden,  now  the  seat,  as  mentioned  earlier,  of  Sir  Edward 
Grey,  together  with  the  estate  of  Rock  Hall,  just  to  the 
southward,  and  other  lands,  was  the  property  of  the  Salkelds 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  Two  of  the  later  ones,  brothers 
apparently,  occupying  respectively  these  two  houses,  were 
renowned  throughout  the  north,  as  the  two  Knights  of  Shrop- 
shire were  a  little  later  throughout  the  south,  for  their  skill  in 
planting,  gardening,  and  land  improving.  The  general  air  of 
leafy  luxuriance,  fostered  no  doubt  by  their  successors  on 
both  estates,  may  in  part,  perhaps,  be  attributed  to  their 
earlier  efforts  in  a  wind-swept  and  war-wracked  country. 
Rock  Hall  lies  just  to  the  south  of  the  old  fortified  tower  of 
Preston  and  of  Ellingham  church  and  manor-house,  near 
which  latter  point  our  much  meandering  byway  meets  the 
North  road.  Gutted  by  fire  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
since  tastefully  restored  and  enlarged,  it  still  contains  the 
Tudor  manor-house,  and  the  pele  tower  from  which  it 
sprang,  that  was  reared  by  a  Harbottle  about  1400,  when 
strifes  were  incessant  and  Harbottles  in  the  thick  of  them  all. 
The  Bosanquets  of  Huguenot  origin  have  now  owned  it  for  a 
century ;  a  place  indeed  of  ancient  fame,  snugly  embowered 
amid  mellow  gardens  behind  an  avenue  of  limes,  that  looks 


72       THE    ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

down  the  street  of  a  well-ordered  hamlet,  flanked  by  a  little 
Norman  church  of  much  distinction.  Many  men  went  out 
from  its  gates  to  play  conspicuous  parts  in  the  stormy  story 
of  the  Border  and  the  north.  Harbottles,  Salkelds,  and 
Fen  wicks,  whose  very  names  have  a  restless,  turbulent  sound 
in  ears  that  are  open  to  the  merest  elements  of  Northumbrian 
lore,  and  always  among  the  foremost  from  the  days  of  Bruce 
to  those  of  the  Pretender.  A  Salkeld  was  a  prominent  local 
leader  in  the  second  part  of  the  Civil  War,  was  captured, 
escaped  to  fight  for  Charles  the  Second  in  Ireland,  and 
twenty  years  later,  as  an  old  man,  drew  his  sword  for  James 
the  Second  in  the  same  country ;  returning  ultimately  to  an 
impoverished  estate,  where  he  lived  and  died  at  the  age  of 
ninety  in  Queen  Anne's  reign,  leaving  no  male  heir.  The 
veteran  was  buried  here  under  the  altar  of  Rock  church, 
having  crowded  as  many  incidents  into  his  long  life  as  any 
heady  cavalier  of  his  day  could  desire.  Among  them  one  is 
forced  to  note  with  some  disapproval  the  deliberate  and 
unprovoked  murder  of  one  of  the  Swinburnes.  Nor  can  this 
be  set  down  to  a  mere  outburst  of  youthful  passion,  for  the 
offender  was  over  thirty  when  he  stabbed  the  above-mentioned 
poor  gentleman  in  the  belly,  of  which  hurt  he  died,  merely 
because  he  would  not  take  a  glass  with  him,  when  one  of  the 
pair  at  least  had  already  taken  too  much.  At  any  rate, 
Captain  Salkeld,  as  he  then  was,  had  exceeded,  according  to 
the  evidence  before  the  coroner's  jury.  The  over-hasty 
captain,  however,  like  a  modern  Kentucky  editor,  retired  into 
the  next  county  for  a  brief  space  to  let  the  affair  blow  over, 
which  it  did  owing,  doubtless,  to  the  turmoil  of  the  Civil 
War,  in  which  he  turned  his  ever-ready  sword  to  a  better 
purpose  for  three  Stuarts,  and  at  the  same  time,  as  he  no 
doubt  considered,  for  his  country.  One  of  the  Fenwicks, 
which  family  immediately  succeeded  him  in  a  brief  tenure  of 
Rock  Hall,  perpetrated  an  even  worse  crime,  in  that  he  was 
not  drunk.  But  times  had  changed  by  Queen  Anne's  advent, 
and  the  murderer  in  this  case  met  his  just  desert  This, 
indeed,  is  better  remembered  by  Northumbrians,  and  tells 


TO   CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM          73 

how  Fenwick,  of  Rock,  during  assize  week  at  Newcastle, 
when  the  country  gentry  were  there  in  force,  entered  an  inn 
parlour  where  Ferdinando  Forster,  M.P.  for  the  county,  was 
sitting,  and,  doubtless  with  unconciliatory  emphasis,  sang  a 
clan  refrain,  "Sir  Walter  Fenwick  is  the  flower  of  them  a'." 
This  was  too  much  for  a  Forster,  for  this  one  at  any  rate,  even 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  there  were  some  words.  But 
ceremony  by  this  time  had  curbed  the  promiscuous  licence  of 
even  blood  feuds.  The  other  did  not  emit  the  ancient  war 
cry,  "  A  Fenwick !  a  Fenwick ! "  and  draw  at  once  on 
Forster,  but  a  few  hours  later  sent  him  in  due  order  a 
challenge  by  John  Hall,  of  Otterburn.  Forster  was  sitting 
late  at  supper,  but  as  the  moon  was  shining,  he  remarked 
that  the  business  might  as  well  be  despatched  at  once.  So  the 
two  repaired  with  their  company  to  a  retired  spot  called  the 
Thorn  Tree,  long  swamped  in  the  chaos  of  the  modern  city. 
At  the  moment  of  first  crossing  swords  Forster,  it  appears, 
slipped  and  fell  on  his  back,  whereat  his  base  opponent 
stepped  forward  and  stabbed  him  deliberately  to  the  heart  as 
he  lay  on  the  ground.  The  murderer  attempted  flight,  but 
was  soon  secured,  tried  a  month  later,  and  hung  at  the 
"  White  Cross,"  near  the  scene  of  his  crime.  His  wife  being 
with  child,  was  in  court  throughout  the  trial,  and  after  the 
sentence  flung  herself  at  the  judge's  feet,  entreating  his 
mercy.  But  times  had  sadly  changed  in  Northumberland. 
"  Madam,  I  am  sorry  for  you,"  was  the  reply,  "  but  we  cannot 
have  our  members  of  Parliament  murdered  in  our  streets." 
Upon  the  day  of  the  execution  the  gates  of  the  city  were 
closed  lest  a  rescue  should  be  attempted  by  the  people  of  the 
north,  among  whom  the  name  of  Fenwick  was  held  in  high 
regard.  But  enough  of  Rock,  which  by  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  had  become  famous  in  more  peaceful 
paths,  and  had  inspired  some  bard  with  a  deficient  sense  of 
cadence  and  quality  to  sing — 

"  Rock  gardens  would  please  Epicurus'  grace, 
Brave  Salkeld's  once,  now  generous  Proctor's  place." 

From  hence   the  great  North  road   to   Scotland   forges 


74       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

forward  over  low  ridges,  with  the  hills  approaching  near  upon 
the  left,  while  beyond  the  wide  stretching  levels  of  the  coast 
country  the  North  Sea  gleams  away  to  the  horizon.  It  was  a 
brilliant  summer  morning  when  I  made  the  first  of  several 
recent  journeys  along  this  section  of  the  ancient  coach-road, 
and  got  the  first  glimpse  on  a  big  scale  of  a  region  whose 
general  features  and  even  details  had  remained  with  me  since 
youth,  so  far  as  they  may  be  gathered  from  frequent  journeys 
through  it.  It  was  an  inspiring  outlook  in  any  case,  owing 
much  to  its  spaciousness,  its  boundless  expanse  of  sea, 
chequered  with  moving  colours,  as  a  summer  breeze,  blowing 
down  from  the  distant  Cheviots,  drove  the  light  clouds  in 
scattered  fragments  between  its  dimpled  surface  and  the  sun. 
From  the  distant  towers  and  grim  fangs  of  Dunstanburgh 
I  could  follow  the  coast-line  by  the  signal  station  gleaming 
white  on  the  green  crest  of  Newton  head,  along  the  curving 
line  of  Beadnell  Bay,  to  where  the  mighty  pile  of  Bamburgh 
rests  on  its  rocky  throne.  Beyond  it  the  strange  archipelago 
of  the  Fame,  each  islet  touched  on  most  days  with  a  gleam 
of  foam,  clustered  around  its  lighthouse  height.  Presently, 
too,  the  sandy  flat  of  Holy  Island,  craning  far  seaward, 
came  within  easy  sight,  and  like  a  small  St.  Michael's  Mount, 
upon  an  isolated  rocky  steep,  its  ancient  fortress  sprang 
above  the  green  and  yellow  levels  of  the  island  and  the  blue 
of  the  sea  with  extraordinary  distinction.  And  what  of  the 
country  between  ?  On  this  occasion  the  hay  harvest  was 
advanced,  and  Northumberland  is  now  in  the  main  a  grass 
country.  Men  and  women  were  piling  it  up  in  all  directions 
into  those  monstrous  cocks  or  "  pikes,"  after  the  fashion  of 
the  north.  By  the  roadside  and  towards  the  sea-coast, 
square  upon  square  of  the  great  green  chessboard  was  fast 
dimpling  with  the  produce  of  the  heaviest  crop  in  a  dozen 
years.  Everything  else,  too,  in  July  was  green,  the  pastures 
where  Irish  store  cattle  or  half-bred  sheep  were  fattening,  of 
a  paler  shade  from  weeks  of  even  the  tempered  sunshine  of 
the  north.  The  occasional  grain  fields,  though  already  in 
head,  were  a  long  time  yet  from  yellowing.  Here  and  there 


TO  CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM          75 

a  square  of  ruddy  brown  marked  a  breadth  of  turnip  land, 
where  brawny  short-skirted  bondagers,  with  the  regulation 
pink  neckerchiefs  and  blue  blouses,  were  still  plying  their 
hoes.  The  woods,  too,  spreading  betimes  across  the  open 
levels,  were  still  the  woods  of  June  in  softer  climes,  and  the 
leaves  of  ash  and  oak  rippled  in  the  crisp  west  wind  with  all 
the  freshness  of  early  summer.  The  red  roofs  of  cottage  and 
hamlet  glimmered  from  point  to  point,  and  here  and  there 
afar  off  on  the  coast  showed  a  bright  speck  of  red  and  white 
against  a  patch  of  blue-black  shadow  that  some  dark  impotently 
threatening  cloud  had  thrown  for  a  moment  over  the  sea. 
But  of  the  large  homesteads,  planted  at  distances  which 
bespeak  the  amplitude  of  their  holdings,  and  the  substance 
of  their  occupants,  what  can  be  said  ?  Not  often  much  for 
the  consolation  of  the  artist  and  the  camera  bearer  !  When 
Northumbria  shook  off  the  agricultural  lethargy  that  followed 
inevitably  Con  those  long-protracted  ages  when  neither  roof- 
tree  nor  life  were  safe,  she  awoke  to  set  her  house  in  order  to 
some  practical  purpose.  Of  small  holdings  or  small  fields  of 
curving  lines,  or  many  gabled,  timber-frame  houses  she  would 
have  none.  She  laid  herself  out — in  her  smoother  agricultural 
portions,  that  is  to  say — in  large  farms  and  in  generous  fields, 
all  uncompromisingly  rectangular.  She  built  her  farmhouses, 
too,  on  practical,  substantial  lines,  a  proceeding  simplified  by 
her  splendid  quarries.  She  erected  her  cottages  on  an  almost 
uniform  model,  but  not  otherwise  unpicturesque,  like  those 
across  the  Border :  a  single  storey  of  solid  stone  and  a  roof 
of  red  tiles.  These  in  great  part  she  has  gathered  round  the 
big  farmhouse  they  are  intended  to  serve,  giving  the  latter 
with  its  large  outbuildings  the  appearance  of  a  village  and  an 
air  of  consequence  not  often  attained  by  homesteads  of  equal 
standing  in  the  south.  In  former  days,  when  grain  was 
paramount — occasionally  even  yet — when  twenty  to  thirty 
big  round  stacks,  neatly  trimmed  and  thatched,  were  a'dded 
to  the  establishment,  it  was  a  sight  to  stir  the  soul  of  Cob- 
bett,  who  saw  these  things  with  the  eye,  not  only  of  a 
rural  economist,  but  in  a  sense  of  a  poet  without  a  poet's 


76       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

detachment  from  the  inwardness  of  the  picture  and  of  the  ful- 
ness of  its  meaning.  If  the  railway  traveller  turn  impatiently 
to  his  newspaper  before  these  great  trim  undulations  and  out- 
standing rural  fortresses  of  stone  and  slate,  and  stack,  and  red 
tiled  roof,  and  bored  perhaps  by  the  foreground  detail,  over- 
looks the  spaciousness  of  the  canvas  and  the  nature  of  its 
setting,  it  is  only  natural.  Out  on  the  face  of  it,  however, 
with  room  to  move  and  leisure  to  look  about  him,  he  would 
see  the  frame  in  which  the  picture  lay  :  the  wild,  curving, 
be-castled  coast-line  upon  the  one  side,  the  distant  Cheviots 
looming  high  upon  the  other,  and  the  triumphs  of  agriculture 
that  lay  between  would  cease  perhaps  to  oppress  his  un- 
sympathetic soul.  If  he  could  to  any  degree  recall  the  past 
of  these  well-looking,  peaceful  undulations,  and  turn  them  back 
into  a  picturesque  and  patchy  waste,  and  replace  the  home- 
steads with  the  pele  towers  which  stood  on  or  about  their 
site,  the  measure  of  his  appreciation  would  no  doubt  be  fuller 
still.  But  this  is  a  matter  of  a  temperament,  and  would 
require  an  effort  of  imagination  unreasonable  to  expect  in 
the  average  Saxon,  who  is  generally  concerned  with  more 
practical  affairs. 

East  Lothian,  which  is  cast  between  wild  moors  and  the 
same  rugged  coast,  is  even  more  aggressively  utilitarian 
than  East  Northumberland.  I  well  remember,  as  if  it  were 
yesterday,  my  own  first  impression  of  it  in  the  heyday  of  its 
agricultural  pride,  when  the  fame  of  it  was  all  over  Europe. 
I  looked  about  me  too,  not  with  the  passing  interest  of  a 
tourist,  but  with  the  eagerness,  nay,  the  anxiety,  with  which 
one-and-twenty  looks  around  his  domicile  for  some  two  years 
to  come.  I  remember  the  momentary  heart  sinking  as  the 
astonishing  trimness  of  that  close-shorn,  prolific  province 
spread  around  me  to  the  brief  limits  of  a  murky  winter's  day. 
But  I  remember  also  the  reaction  next  morning  when  a  bright 
sun  revealed  the  whole  brown  sweep  of  distant  moorlands 
that  hems  in  that  famous  county  on  the  south  and  west,  and 
I  realized  that  they  were  the  Lammermuirs,  for  at  least  I 
knew  my  Scott.  Arthur's  seat,  too,  and  the  Pentlands  loomed 


TO  CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM          77 

finely  on  the  north-west  horizon  from  my  bedroom  window, 
though  near  twenty  miles  away.  The  hills  of  Fife  rolled 
gloriously  along  the  further  shores  of  the  wide  opening  Firth 
of  Forth  at  no  ignoble  altitude,  while  behind  and  near  by  was 
that  Northumbrian-like  coast-line  guarded  by  the  Bass  rock 
and  its  tributary  islands  and  overlooked  by  the  aspiring  cone 
of  Berwick  Law  and  the  ruined  towers  of  the  Black  Douglas, 
and  many  another  haunt  of  ancient  fame.  No  smoke  of 
steam-ploughsf  though  near  a  dozen  were  sometimes  puffing 
within  sight,  no  tall,  red  engine  chimneys,  which  made  the  big, 
bare  homesteads  look  like  factories,  nor  the  miles  of  treeless 
squares  bordered  with  low,  trim  hedges  and  laden  in  fruition 
time  with  a  weight  of  produce  unequalled  in  Europe,  could 
destroy  the  poetry  of  that  country.  For,  as  in  Northumber- 
land, you  could  see  it  nearly  all  from  almost  any  point,  its 
romantic  and  suggestive  fringes,  its  great  and  fertile  heart. 
Indeed,  the  very  materialism  of  the  latter  grew  upon  you 
with  closer  knowledge  in  a  way  that  even  touched  the 
imagination  if  you  had  one,  as  did  the  enterprising  skill 
of  the  men  who  made  six  hundred  acres  produce  like  a 
spaded  garden  with  thirty-acre  fields  for  beds,  who  sometimes 
paid  as  high  as  five  pounds  an  acre  rent,  and  laid  out  nearly 
double  the  capital  per  acre  at  that  time  regarded  as  adequate 
in  England,  and  still  saved  money  above  a  generous  living. 
There  was  something  great  in  the  enterprise  and  fearless 
expenditure  that  stirred  nature  to  such  unprecedented  effort, 
and  produced  such  a  sight  as  East  Lothian  displayed  in 
harvest  time  ;  or  even  in  October,  when  the  potato  fields  cast 
up  their  store  before  the  prongs  of  the  "  lifting  ploughs,"  and 
again,  a  little  latter,  when  the  frost-shrivelled  leaves  showed 
up  the  serried  ranks  of  swedes  or  yellow  turnips  jostling  one 
another  in  the  rows.  I  have  seen  two  great  wheat  harvests  in 
Manitoba,  where  the  local  talks  of  twenty-five  bushels  all 
round  with  just  pride,  for  it  pays  well.  An  English  farmer 
would  starve  to-day  on  an  average  Manitoba  yield,  which  is 
less  than  that.  Even  in  the  high-priced  days  of  the  seventies 
he  would  hardly  have  paid  his  way.  A  Lothian  farmer  would 


78       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

have  regarded  such  a  prospect  as  a  miserable  failure,  for  he 
produced  nearly  twice  as  much  with  tolerable  consistency. 
Perhaps  what  touched  one  so  much  in  Lothian  and  Berwick- 
shire was  the  prodigious  contrast  between  its  then  pre- 
eminence and  the  apathy  and  backwardness  which  had 
distinguished  that  region  not  much  more  than  a  century 
earlier,  when  the  lairds  meekly  imported  English  bailiffs  to 
teach  "  the  new  farming  "  to  their  by  no  means  tractable  and 
generally  reactionary  tenants.  Northumberland,  too,  learnt 
from  the  south,  though  somewhat  earlier,  and  then  went 
ahead  of  it  with  northern  vigour  and  enterprise,  to  become, 
speaking  broadly,  the  inspirer  of  the  Merse  and  Lothian 
agriculturists,  who  in  turn  eclipsed  Northumberland.  But 
the  latter  followed  in  its  pupil's  wake,  though  perhaps  a 
goodish  way  behind.  At  least  it  used  to  be  thought  so,  and 
I  fancy  with  good  cause,  by  the  Lothian  farmers,  whose  com- 
placency was  fostered  by  the  steady  procession  of  Danes, 
Swedes,  Frenchmen,  Germans,  and  Americans,  of  the  land- 
owning class  mostly,  to  say  nothing  of  Englishmen,  who  used 
not  only  to  come  as  admiring  visitors,  but  often  remained  for 
a  year  or  two  to  sit  at  their  feet.  But  the  glory  has  long 
departed  with  the  collapse  of  British  tillage  on  a  great  scale 
before  the  cruel  slump  in  grain.  These  men  who  did  so 
much  for  Scotland  have  been  mostly  wiped  out,  not  merely 
as  individuals,  for  Nature  by  now  would  have  almost  accom- 
plished that,  but  by  name  and  race  as  farmers.  The  Lothians 
still  lead  Britain  in  the  sorry  matter  of  tillage  farming,  but 
the  present  occupants  entered  into  a  great  inheritance,  and 
the  present  landlords  do  not  naturally  get  anything  like  the 
rents  which  the  men  of  old  bid  against  one  another  for  the 
privilege  of  paying  without  fear  or  favour.  It  was  from  this 
point  of  view  that  in  the  early  seventies  I  acquired  some 
passing  familiarity  with  the  Northumbrian  landscape  from  the 
train  window,  and  felt  not  quite  a  stranger  as  in  these 
degenerate  days  I  looked  upon  it  once  more  at  much  closer 
quarters.  But  what  a  difference  !  An  epoch  and  a  generation 
has  passed  away,  where  all  was  tillage,  following  in  the  wake 


TO  CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM          79 

of  the  Lothians  but  in  the  van  of  England,  grass  overwhelm- 
ingly prevails,  and  the  grazier  is  now  king.  Losses,  immense 
losses,  must  assuredly  have  preceded  the  change  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  has  not  been  the  same  disruption  of  the 
famous  old  farming  families,  that,  I  am  told  by  those  who 
should  best  know,  has  occurred  to  the  northward.  There  was 
not  so  much  at  stake,  nor  quite  the  same  high  pressure. 
Feudal  attachments  seemed  dead  on  the  long  leaseholds  of 
East  Lothian  in  the  early  seventies,  commercialism  the  pre- 
vailing factor  between  landlord  and  tenant,  which  struck  every 
southerner  who  was  long  enough  in  the  country  to  realize  with 
peculiar  force,  and  most  Englishmen  who  went  there  were  from 
the  two  classes  best  qualified  to  notice  the  contrast.  In  East 
Northumberland,  the  old  relation  between  landlord  and 
tenant  was  much  less  detached,  and,  I  think,  remains  so  after 
their  mutual  tribulations,  a  condition  which,  I  fancy,  also 
applies  to  Roxburghshire.  So  rents,  no  doubt,  were  even 
relatively  lower  in  the  good  times  than  in  the  Lothians,  and 
the  dislocation  of  individual  families  in  the  eighties  and 
nineties  less  violent 

But  some  readers  will  not  thank  me  for  all  this  farming 
talk ;  most  people,  however,  with  an  eye  for  landscape,  are 
interested  in  hedges,  I  have  already  briefly  touched  on  the 
Northumbrian  variety,  and  as  I  travelled  the  North  Road  amid 
the  scent  of  hay,  it  became  obvious  enough  that  the  character- 
istic fence  of  olden  times  was  still  a  luminous  feature  in  the 
landscape.  It  may  be  seen,  to  be  sure,  here  and  there  all  over 
England,  for  it  is  nothing  but  a  riotous  thorn  hedge,  with  the 
appearance  of  having  been  riddled  and  raided  by  stock  or 
vermin  to  the  height  of  perhaps  five  feet,  till  nothing  is  left 
but  daylight  and  thin  bare  trunks,  carrying,  however,  a  large 
burden  of  upper  foliage  as  Nature  admits  of.  But  nowhere  else 
does  it  catch  the  eye  in  all  direction  as  a  regular  institution. 
The  younger  farmers  say  it  is  mere  carelessness — a  legacy 
from  the  bad  times  through  which  they  passed  as  boys.  But  I 
know  better,  for  I  remember  it  well  myself  in  the  palmy  days, 
and  how  the  Lothian  men,  who  trimmed  their  low  hedges  as  in 


80       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

a  garden,  used  to  chuckle  as  they  passed  south  with  critical  con- 
descending eye  in  the  season  of  the  agricultural  shows.  The 
older  farmers  seem  to  regard  it,  with  more  than  complacency, 
as  an  old  institution,  holding  that  it  makes  a  better  shelter 
for  stock,  a  matter  in  these  pastoral  days  of  obvious  import- 
ance. If  I  were  a  sheep  seeking  shelter  in  a  driving  storm,  I 
am  free  to  admit  I  should  prefer  a  fence  with  a  bottom  to  it, 
rather  than  one  like  an  interminable  row  of  umbrellas  set  bolt 
upright,  or  a  continuous  awning  with  no  side  to  it.  One 
advantage,  however,  is  undeniable  if  fortuitous,  for  the  bare 
stems  make  excellent  posts  on  which  to  spring  the  barbed 
wire,  that  has  stirred  up  almost  as  much  choler  in  its  brief 
day  as  the  motor. 

On  this  first  occasion  pursuing  the  North  Road,  I  was  told 
by  various  persons  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  left  hand  for  the 
"  muckle  posts,"  which  denoted  the  turn  over  Charlton  Moor 
to  Woolen  My  eye,  however,  was  too  persistently  kept  sea- 
ward, looking  at  those  objects  I  have  in  part  noted  here,  and 
thinking  of  those  bygone  days  which  they  recalled,  that  the 
"  muckle  posts  " — two  stone  gate  pillars  sufficiently  suggestive 
of  a  private  road  to  deter  any  strange  wayfarers  from  taking 
it  for  a  public  one — escaped  me  unawares.  I  had  already 
before  this  passed  Twizell  house,  retired  in  woods,  and  crossed 
the  Lucker  burn,  which  sings  in  a  rocky  channel  beneath 
their  shade,  and  found  myself  approaching  Belford,  where  a 
wholesome  looking  grandame  brought  my  attention  to  the  fact 
that  those  elusive  "  muckle  posts  "  lay  far  behind  me.  She 
was  a  communicative  veteran,  on  whose  soul  the  wiping  out  of 
a  certain  ancient  family  in  the  neighbourhood,  whom  she  had 
served  apparently  in  youth,  lay  heavily.  The  Northumbrian 
peasant  bears  a  more  outwardly  suspicious  mien  towards  the 
stranger  than  any  in  England,  and  when  you  get  back  into 
the  border  dales  it  becomes  almost  truculent,  though  not  thus 
intended.  His  aloofness  is  only  surpassed  by  that  of  some 
natives  in  Wales,  who  will  get  over  a  fence  if  they  see  a 
stranger  coming.  But  this  is  only  because  they  are  fearful  of 
being  addressed  in  English,  and  betraying  their  deficiency  in 


TO   CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM  81 

the  Sassenach  tongue.  But  the  Northumbrian's  taciturnity 
is  superficial,  a  mere  Border  trait,  inherited  from  times  when 
every  alien  face  might  indicate  a  foe.  He  will  never  speak 
nor  even  nod  to  you  of  his  own  accord,  and  only  return  your 
salutation  occasionally,  and  then  in  a  gruff  way,  as  if  you  had 
forced  him  to  do  an  uncanny  thing.  It  is  no  use  good- 
nighting  or  good-morning  him,  as  he  has  no  such  words  in 
his  vocabulary,  and  apparently  thinks  them  meaningless  and 
foolish.  If  you  wish  to  get  an  answer,  you  must  remark  that 
it  is  a  soft  day,  if  it  is  raining,  or  a  hard  one  if  freezing,  or 
venture  on  a  weather  forecast,  or  allude  to  the  elemental 
condition  of  the  day  before.  He  will  then  reply  in  kind, 
sometimes  at  quite  a  length,  and  hold  you  as  a  normal  being. 
It  is  only  his  outer  man,  however,  that  is  thus  frigid.  A  well- 
known  cardinal  axiom  for  getting  about  Northumberland 
smoothly  and  sociably  is  that  the  stranger  must  make  the 
first  advances.  If  he  does  not,  he  may  never  exchange  a 
word  with  the  humbler  rural  folk  in  a  month  of  days.  Indeed, 
he  is  expected  thus  to  take  the  initiative.  It  is  like  some 
countries,  where  in  a  higher  circle  it  is  etiquette  for  the  alien 
to  make  the  first  call.  Go  up  to  a  Northumbrian  and  open 
conversation  with  him,  you  will  find  a  frank  and  friendly 
and  often  quite  a  talkative  person.  Nay,  more  than  this, 
those  who  know  him  best,  say  that  this  method  of  procedure 
gives  him  positive  gratification,  and  certainly  my  own  experi- 
ence would  not  lead  me  to  contest  the  fact.  One  must  be 
careful  of  generalizing,  however,  anywhere,  much  less  in 
Northumberland.  The  Tynesiders,  the  men  of  the  east,  and 
those  again  of  the  western  dales  have  as  much  difference 
of  character  as  they  have  of  dialect.  The  Lothian  hind  of 
my  recollection,  and  my  association  with  him  was  inevitably 
pretty  intimate,  was  gruff  and  taciturn ;  but,  unlike  the 
Northumbrian,  his  reserve  was  an  enduring  one,  and  his  lack 
of  grace — social  I  mean,  not  spiritual — was  perennial.  But  if 
you  had  offered  him  a  shilling  or  anything  for  a  merely 
nominal  service,  he  would  reject  it  with  contumely  as  some- 
thing like  an  insult,  a  dour  and  honest  man,  and  a  sober  one 
G 


82       THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

too,  for  he  took  his  whisky  all  at  once,  at  quite  respectably 
long  intervals,  lying  off  for  a  day  or  two,  and  the  doctors  used 
to  say  it  did  him  good.  But  the  ethics  of  this  liquor  question 
have  greatly  changed,  in  the  south  at  any  rate.  I  am  not 
sure  about  the  North,  while  in  Scotland  tradition,  I  am  told, 
dies  harder  still.  But  the  lining  of  the  Northern  stomach 
is  of  special  material,  and  no  Scotsman,  with  so  many  octoge- 
narian ten-tumbler  men  still  about  him,  is  likely  to  be  scared 
by  articles  in  the  Reviews,  which  threaten  an  early  grave, 
death,  and  premature  decay  in  tablespoon  measures. 

Twizell  house,  once  the  abode  of  the  Selbys,  owes  the 
wealth  of  varied  foliage  which  screens  it  from  the  world  to 
the  member  of  that  family  who  in  the  earlier  nineteenth 
century  had  some  national  fame  as  a  writer  on  birds  and 
trees.  Adderstone  Hall,  which  lies  a  mile  or  so  seaward,  is 
an  old  place  of  the  Forsters  ;  and  it  was  a  blacksmith,  I  believe 
from  the  adjoining  village,  who  accompanied  the  celebrated 
Dorothy  on  her  ride  to  London  after  the  affair  of  the  'fifteen, 
when  she  assisted  in  her  brother's  escape  from  the  Tower,  and 
for  which  easy  solution  of  a  somewhat  embarrassing  respon- 
sibility, it  was  whispered,  the  authorities  were  not  wholly 
ungrateful  to  her. 

A  mile  of  steady  climb  westward,  through  an  enclosed 
country  by  an  immense  red  sandstone  water-mill,  deep 
shadowed  by  still  loftier  trees,  whose  deserted  air  and  idle 
wheel  proclaim  that  times  have  changed,  and  our  scene  too 
wholly  changes.  For  the  road  here  breaks  out  on  Chatton 
Moor,  and  may  be  seen  trailing  far  away  over  the  wilds 
towards  another  obvious  and  deep  descent,  an  interval  of  low 
country  beyond  which,  some  seven  miles  away,  the  Cheviots 
lie  piled  imposingly  against  the  western  sky.  We  shall  see 
much  of  them  later  on  in  our  journey,  so  I  will  only  pause 
here  for  a  moment,  on  this  lonely  stretch  of  moorland  road, 
to  say  that  I  know  of  no  point  from  which  they  make  a  finer 
display.  The  noblest  portion  of  the  range  is  here  framed,  as 
it  were,  between  the  further  slopes  of  the  lower  plateau  one  is 
crossing.  The  broad  summit  of  the  "  Muckle  Cheviot,"  the 


TO  CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM  83 

king  of  the  group,  rises  where  it  should  rise  to  a  height  of 
twenty-seven  hundred  feet  in  the  centre  of  the  rear,  a  mighty 
Border  sentinel  with  a  foot  planted  in  both  counties,  and  sup- 
ported close  at  hand  by  the  bolder  and  scarcely  lower  crown 
of  Hedgehope,  while  between  us  and  them,  amid  the  broken 
wooded  country  below,  the  river  Till  ripples  with  ever  sinuous 
curves  to  the  northward  and  the  Tweed. 

This  high  stretch  of  moorland  road,  delightful  as  it  is 
upon  a  summer  day,  crosses  the  central  range  at  a  somewhat 
narrow  point,  and  in  less  than  two  miles  begins  to  descend 
again  between  the  trammels  of  the  hedgerow.  To  right  and 
left,  however,  particularly  the  latter,  being  the  south,  the  breezy 
sunny  waste  sweeps  away  to  regions  far  remote  from  the 
ridges  which  bound  our  view.  A  finger-post  displays  itself 
at  the  junction  of  another  solitary  road  with  our  own  and,  as 
seen  against  this  sky  at  a  distance  and  in  such  a  spot,  is  not 
unsuggestive  of  a  gallows.  For  this  is  most  emphatically 
a  place  where  such  things  should  have  happened,  not  because 
it  is  merely  a  bit  of  moorland,  like  several  hundred  thousand 
acres  of  the  county  of  Northumberland,  but  because  two 
highways,  pursuing  otherwise  a  normal  civilized  low  country 
course,  stride  over  its  lonely  and  exposed  face  in  a  manner 
that  somehow  makes  the  "  solitary  horseman "  of  our  old 
friend  G.  P.  R.  James's  opening  chapters  leap  at  once  to 
the  mind.  For  sprites,  highwaymen,  murders,  duels,  and 
other  horrors  fascinating  in  the  armchair  have  a  fancy  for 
lonely  places,  but  the  latter  must  not  be  too  remote  for 
handy  association,  as  it  were,  with  the  human  or  spectral 
world ;  a  stretch  of  moorland  road,  like  this  one  rather, 
connecting  two  reasonably  peopled  districts,  not  too  much 
travelled,  but  unavoidably  so  by  a  good  few.  That  is  the 
place  where  things  worth  telling  happen,  or  used  to  happen, 
and  such  in  an  eminent  degree  is  Chatton  Moor.  Such  at 
least  it  seemed  to  me,  even  as  I  sat  on  the  dry  turf  beneath 
the  finger-post  on  a  bright  July  noon  with  the  scent  of  the 
whins  and  the  wild  thyme  pervading  the  air,  the  larks  filling 
it  with  song,  and  the  peewits  with  complaint.  A  Scotch 


84       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

shepherd — half  the  "herds"  in  the  Northumbrian  hills  are 
Scotsmen — with  the  assistance  of  a  few  hurdles  and  his 
dogs,  was  smearing  the  feet  of  some  half-bred  gimmers  close 
by,  a  rather  unlooked-for  operation  in  this  high  country. 
But  the  moor  was  "  aye  wet "  hereabouts,  he  said,  and  the 
heavier  sheep  much  addicted  to  ills  of  the  feet  He  was 
somewhat  of  a  pessimist  too,  this  particular  herder,  and  with 
a  breadth  of  view  one  would  hardly  expect  from  a  man  of 
flocks,  deplored  the  setting  to  grass  of  so  much  of  the  low 
country  for  the  number  of  good  men  he  declared  he  knew 
to  be  out  of  work.  An  equally  harmonious  figure  then 
broke  upon  the  waste  in  the  shape  of  a  horseman  approaching 
at  a  hand  gallop,  suggestive  somehow,  so  far  as  the  horse  was 
concerned,  of  a  hunter  in  the  making  rather  than  of  a  man  in 
a  hurry,  and  this  was  pretty  obvious  when  a  really  imposing 
specimen  of  the  Northumbrian  farmer,  well  up  in  years,  but 
ruddy  of  face,  long  of  limb,  and  straight  as  a  pine,  joined  the 
group,  on  a  young  horse  with  quarters,  shoulders,  and  breeding. 
He  remarked  to  me  that  the  wind  seemed  going  round  a  bit, 
which  is  only  one  of  the  many  local  versions  of  "  good-day," 
and  I  left  him  to  discuss  more  important  and  privy  matters 
with  his  shepherd  just  as  a  tramp  came  up,  pulled  off  his 
boots,  and  laid  himself  full  length  on  the  turf  across  the 
road  in  an  attitude  of  leisurely  contemplation.  Nothing 
else  happened  on  Chatton  Moor  that  morning,  nor  did  I 
encounter  even  so  much  when,  many  weeks  later,  in  the 
gloom  of  a  wild  autumn  evening,  I  traversed  it  again  for 
the  last  time.  Then,  indeed,  both  the  Cheviots  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  sea-coast  on  the  other  were  veiled,  and  the 
fir  copses  at  the  edge  of  the  waste  moaned  drearily,  as  if 
they  had  all  manner  of  tales  on  their  mind. 

Standing  finely  up  on  the  western  edge  of  the  moor  is 
the  bold  summit  of  Ros  castle,  where,  half  buried  in  heather, 
are  the  well-defined  ramparts  of  a  pre-historic  camp.  Against 
the  long  western  face  of  the  slope  beneath,  lies  the  ancient 
Park  of  Chillingham,  famous  for  its  wild  cattle,  and  on  the 
further  fringe  of  it  the  noble  battlemented  pile,  which  long 


85 

ago  passed  from  the  Greys  to  the  Tankervilles.  The  main 
road  heading  for  Wooler  drops  down  with  steep  gradients 
and  many  corners  to  the  village  of  Chatton,  where  the  low 
stone  cottages  look  bowery  and  trim  and  smiling,  as  they 
should  do  in  the  heart  of  a  great  estate,  and  a  long  stone 
bridge  close  to  the  village  crosses  the  Till,  babbling  gently 
between  crumbly  red  banks  on  its  way  to  that  distant 
Flodden,  which  has  conferred  upon  it,  I  presume,  such 
measures  of  fame  as  it  enjoys  in  the  outer  world.  Edward 
the  First  was  here  for  a  short  time  during  those  critical 
campaigns  when  the  whole  future  of  Scotland,  perhaps,  hung 
on  the  measure  of  his  waning  days,  and  the  pele  tower  in 
which  the  Chatton  vicars  of  the  fifteenth  century  were  com- 
pelled to  entrench  themselves  is  embodied  in  the  present 
parsonage.  A  hostelry  with  some  air  of  rural  distinction 
is  a  prominent  feature  in  Chatton,  and  enjoys  a  monopoly 
between  the  coast  country  and  Wooler.  I  made  some  acquaint- 
ance with  it  later,  when  the  grayling  which  now  swarm  in 
the  Till  to  the  partial  discomfiture  of  its  indigenous  in- 
habitants, the  trout,  came  into  season.  It  was  then  the 
halfway  house  of  jocund  farmers  returning  from  the  autumn 
sales  with  the  biggest  cheques  in  their  pockets,  or  at  their 
banks,  they  had  handled  on  a  sheep  account  for  twenty 
years. 

To  get  to  Chillingham,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  turn 
from  the  upper  road  at  the  edge  of  the  moor  and  pursue 
another  which,  descending  a  gentler  and  more  southerly  slope, 
brings  you  to  the  lodge  gates  in  a  short  two  miles.  A 
straight  avenue  leads  to  the  castle,  which  is  a  large  square 
enclosing  a  courtyard  with  an  embattled  tower  rising  at  each 
corner.  The  building  was  much  restored  by  Inigo  Jones, 
but  has  still  a  stern  and  feudal  aspect,  not  lessened  by  the 
sombre  stone  of  which  it  is  fashioned.  The  door  now  used  is 
approached  through  the  courtyard,  and  from  thence  a  narrow 
winding  staircase  leads  up  to  the  state-rooms,  which  are  of 
imposing  proportions,  and  contain  a  great  store  of  trophies 
and  valuable  paintings,  among  the  latter  being  several  of  the 


86       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Stuart  kings.  On  the  end  wall  of  the  dining-room  ,  hangs 
a  large  canvas  of  Landseer,  which  has  some  interest  as  being 
by  repute  the  artist's  favourite  among  his  own  productions, 
and  as  much  perhaps  as  representing  the  late  earl  standing 
over  the  carcase  of  one  of  his  own  wild  bulls,  which  just 
before  had  nearly  succeeded  in  killing  him.  Economy  of 
room  for  actual  living  and  sleeping  in  is  certainly  one  merit 
of  the  feudal  style  pure  and  simple.  For  of  hall-way  or 
corridor  space  there  appears  to  be  almost  none  at  Chillingham, 
which  may  be  accounted  by  modern  standards,  perhaps,  as 
somewhat  undignified  in  a  stately  fabric  with  stately  rooms. 
A  narrow  passage  running  along  the  courtyard  side  on  both 
storeys,  opening  into  the  various  large  chambers  which 
represents  the  width  of  the  curtain  of  the  castle  and  look 
outward,  is  simplicity  itself.  The  corkscrew  staircases  up  and 
down  by  way  of  the  angle  towers  are  not,  I  should  imagine, 
so  simple.  I  mounted  to  the  battlements  which  presented  a 
Froissart-like  bird'seye  view  of  the  quadranglar  pile,  and  was 
sorry  to  remember  that  none  of  it  had  been  built  when  Henry 
the  Third  was  here,  not  even  the  corner  towers  which,  I  believe, 
are  fourteenth  century.  At  such  a  height,  too — for  the  castle 
is  of  three  and  four  storeys — one  could  realize  how  unusually 
shut  in  it  was  for  a  building  of  such  size  and  such  renown  by 
lofty  heights  upon  one  side  and  luxuriant  timber  on  the  others. 
I  did  not  penetrate  to  the  ancient  prison  and  underlying 
dungeon.  You  may  see  these  gloomy  survivals  of  a  merciless 
age  all  over  the  country,  but  nowhere  else  in  Britain  can  you 
see  the  direct  and  unmixed  descendants  of  its  original  wild 
cattle,  still  in  a  semi-wild  condition.  Conspicuous,  too,  among 
the  household  gods  of  Chillingham  is  a  slab  of  stone,  from 
the  interior  of  which  one  of  those  supernatural  frogs  that 
astonished  the  world  from  time  to  time  hopped  out  some 
centuries  ago.  There  is  a  long  Latin  inscription  upon  it  of 
seventeenth-century  date,  explaining  the  incident,  and  its 
authorship  seems  to  have  caused  more  discussion  than  the 
frog  among  antiquaries,  as  is  their  way.  Chillingham,  as 
already  mentioned,  belonged  to  the  Greys  from  quite  early 


TO  CHARLTON  AND   CHILLINGHAM          87 

times,  and  still  belongs  to  them  in  a  sense  that  Alnwick  and 
Wark worth  belong  to  the  Percies.  But  in  1714,  when  the 
heiress  of  the  last  Greys  and  first  Lord  Tankerville  married 
Lord  Ossulston,  she  did  not,  as  in  the  other  case,  carry  her 
name  with  the  estates.  The  earldom  of  Tankerville,  however, 
was  shortly  revived  in  the  person  of  this  gentleman,  which  was 
an  equivalent,  though  his  descendants  retain  their  family 
patronymic  of  Bennet.  The  park,  where  this  world-famous 
herd  ranges,  does  not  immediately  adjoin  the  castle.  Their 
domain  is  a  wildish  natural  kind  of  chase  some  fifteen 
hundred  acres  in  extent,  which  runs  in  broad  ridges  and 
hollows  up  the  lower  slopes  of  the  overhanging  moors,  and 
includes  considerable  stretches  of  natural  woodland.  The 
herd  maintained  at  about  sixty  head  are  kept  strictly  under 
lock  and  key,  and  no  other  animals  share  their  ample  range. 
No  one  whatsoever^  admitted  there  without  the  keeper,  lest 
he  needlessly  stampede  the  herd  or  they  him  ;  the  odds 
between  the  two  eventualities  being  apparently  about  even. 
So  we  duly  set  forth  for  the  bounds  of  the  chase  with  the 
interesting  and  informing  veteran  who  had  its  touchy  and 
high-strung  denizens  under  his  special  care. 

The  history  of  the  herd  is,  of  course,  familiar,  so  far  as  it  can 
be  ascertained,  to  most  Northumbrians.  Much  has  been  written 
of  them  both  in  past  and  present  times  by  those  more  nearly 
concerned,  as  is  natural  enough  in  a  matter  of  such  uncommon 
interest.  It  is  generally  agreed  that  they  are  a  remnant  of 
the  cattle  that  originally  roamed  this  Border  country,  whether 
of  indigenous  or  imported  origin,  and  were  enclosed  in  the 
chase  they  now  occupy  some  time  early  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
They  must  have  remained  in  a  savage  state  and  undrivable, 
or  the  Scots  would  surely  have  rounded  them  up  into  one  of 
the  innumerable  hauls  of  stock  they  gathered  from  the  valley 
of  the  Till.  No  doubt  they  were  hunted  as  game  by  their 
lords  of  old,  and  the  bulls,  when  confronted  by  bow  and 
arrow,  must  have  provided  some  moments  sufficiently  delirious 
even  for  a  Border  baron.  How  these  ancients  handled  them, 
however,  we  may  not  know.  Since  modern  history  began 


88       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

\ 

those  singled  out  for  slaughter  have  been  killed  by  firearms, 

and  it  takes  a  ball  very  accurately  planted,  indeed,  to  stop 
the  charge  of  a  wounded  bull.  In  the  days  of  imperfect 
weapons,  however,  the  whole  countryside  were  called  in  to 
assist ;  and  these  encounters,  according  to  all  accounts,  were 
distinguished  by  many  thrilling  incidents.  Latter-day 
anecdotes  of  a  more  humorous  kind  are  related  sometimes  in 
connection  with  artists  prompted  by  zeal  or  a  commission  to  a 
too  close  interview  with  their  potential  sitters.  Among  others, 
both  Landseer  and  Bewick  are  said  to  have  been  eventually 
treed  before  they  had  finished  with  their  models.  Under  the 
wing  of  the  keeper  I  felt  very  much  happier  than  I  have  often 
felt  when  traversing  in  waders  and  brogues,  a  Welsh  riverside 
pasture  dominated  by  that  worst  of  all  tame  bulls,  a  black 
Welshman,  and  I  am  sure  was  very  much  safer.  The  Cul- 
lingham  herd  keep  always  together,  and  it  was  some  time 
before  we  discovered  their  whereabouts.  It  seems  that  their 
habits  and  movements  when  approached  carelessly  are  con- 
ducted under  a  sort  of  hereditary  system,  the  same  to-day  as 
described  nearly  a  century  ago.  If  thus  alarmed  they  make 
off  at  a  gallop,  wrote  a  well-known  steward  of  Chillingham  for 
Bewick's  book,  and  after  travelling  a  certain  distance  wheel 
and  return  to  within  forty  or  fifty  yards,  tossing  their  heads 
in  threatening  fashion.  This  manoeuvre  they  repeat  several 
times,  shortening  the  measure  of  their  retreat,  however,  on 
each  occasion,  and  coming  proportionately  nearer  to  the 
incautious  stranger,  when  it  is  high  time,  says  the  old  expert, 
for  him  to  leave.  But  though  I  should  like  to  have  seen  them 
stampede,  the  keeper  did  not,  his  mission  being  to  approach 
as  close  as  possible  without  disturbing  them.  This  we  did, 
under  his  skilful  manoeuvring  with  more  than  common  suc- 
cess, and  got  within  about  sixty  yards,  while  some  powerful 
binoculars  brought  the  animals  virtually  within  touch.  They 
are  of  quite  uniform  colour,  white  with  a  very  faint  tawny 
shade  in  it,  a  black  nose,  more  or  less  red  ears,  and  white 
horns  of  the  branching  Hereford  type  with  black  tips.  And 
by  the  same  token  I  seem  to  remember  some  evidence  that 


\ 
TO  CHARLTON  AND   CHILLINGHAM  89 

the  cattle  of  the  Welsh  Border  in  John's  reign  are  mentioned 
as  white  with  red  ears,  the  origin  of  the  Hereford  in  the  opinion 
of  a  friend  who  was  much  concerned  with  them  and  their 
herd  book. 

These  ancient  Britons  did  not  much  like  being  looked 
at.  One  after  another  they  slowly  rose  to  their  feet.  The 
two  or  three  bulls  among  them,  whose  respective  idiosyn- 
cracies  the  keeper  dwelt  upon  with  knowledge  and  humour, 
moved  uneasily  about.  A  single  calf,  recently  dropped,  was 
with  the  herd,  for  these  additions  often  escaped  their  custodian's 
eye  ;  the  mothers  having  a  passion  for  hiding  their  offspring 
in  some  unfrequented  corner  of  the  chase,  and  cunningly 
returning  to  the  herd  after  its  frequent  wants  are  satisfied. 
The  calves  themselves  crouch  like  a  hare  on  its  form  when 
discovered,  a  proceeding  regarded  as  one  of  the  many  points 
in  favour  of  their  savage  origin.  The  bulls  fight  furiously,  the 
uproar  of  such  a  contest  had  been  heard  the  day  before  at 
the  castle  a  mile  away,  no  less  than  four  of  them  being 
engaged  at  once.  Those  which,  either  from  age  or  fighting 
power,  are  unable  to  hold  their  own  are  relegated  to  the 
ignominy  of  an  enclosed  paddock  at  the  edge  of  the  park, 
where  we  passed  close  to  them  on  our  return,  and  noted  the 
difference  in  their  bearing. 

At  the  gate  of  the  north  lodge  of  the  castle  a  small 
hamlet  of  cottages  clusters  about  a  green  knoll,  on  which  is 
set  the  ancient  and  interesting  little  church.  Restoration,  as 
might  be  expected,  has  been  here  busy.  The  original  Norman 
doorway,  however,  still  remains,  and  in  the  chancel  aisle 
there  is  a  beautiful  and  richly  decorated  altar-tomb  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  carrying  full-length  effigies  of  Sir  Ralph 
Grey  and  his  wife.  This  knight  played  a  conspicuous  and 
mixed  part  in  the  border  as  a  Yorkist.  Under  the  great 
Earl  of  Warwick  he  conducted  the  successful  siege  of  Dun- 
stanburgh.  Dissatisfied  at  being  relegated  to  a  second  place 
in  the  command  of  Alnwick,  he  betrayed  it  to  the  Lancastrians 
and  joined  their  party.  A  year  later  he  played  the  coward 
on  their  behalf,  running  away  and  starting  a  general  stampede 


90       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

of  his  friends  before  the  Yorkist  forces  on  the  Devil's  Water 
near  Hexham.  A  little  later  in  the  same  year,  however, 
he  played  the  hero,  if  so  much  may  be  accounted  to  a  man 
who  had  no  chance  of  quarter.  For  while  in  command  of 
Bamburgh  castle  he  refused  all  summons  to  surrender,  though 
his  very  chamber  was  riddled  by  the  king's  brass  gun, 
"  Dijon,"  and  declared  he  would  die  in  the  castle.  He  did 
what  was  practically  the  same  thing,  for  the  fortress  being 
breached  and  carried  by  assault,  he  was  captured,  taken  to 
Doncaster,  and  there  executed.  He  looks  a  very  noble  mousta- 
chioed gentleman,  lying  here  in  rich  armour  and  red  tunic,  with 
his  lady  beside  him  in  loose  robes  and  high  headdress.  The 
sides  of  the  tomb  are  profuse  in  armorial  bearings,  supported 
by  angels  and  carved  figures.  Behind,  on  the  wall,  more 
angels  are  depicted  carrying  the  souls  of  the  illustrious  pair 
to  that  paradise  which  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  as  the  con- 
genial domicile  of  a  border  baron,  according  to  his  con- 
ception of  it.  An  upright  figure  holds  the  departing  warrior's 
helmet  and  crest,  which  he  is  abandoning  for  good,  but 
with  such  apparent  confidence  on  the  part  of  his  sorrowing 
friends. 

The  rocky,  heath-girt  pinnacles  of  Ross  castle,  referred  to 
as  we  descended  from  Chatton  Moor  to  Chillingham,  rise 
over  a  thousand  feet  above  the  latter  and  the  Till  valley. 
It  is  the  loftiest  and  most  conspicuous  point  on  this  undu- 
lating platform  of  central  moorland,  that  we  so  recently 
crossed  at  a  narrow  point,  and  is  well  worth  the  climb  for 
the  prospect  it  holds  out  to  the  climber.  From  its  summit 
you  front  at  close  quarters  the  whole  range  of  the  Cheviots, 
and  can  follow  the  course  of  many  a  winding  valley  by  the 
fold  of  its  overhanging  hills  far  into  their  lonely  heart.  Over 
the  bright  summer  greenery  of  the  ancient  chase  that  spreads 
downwards  from  your  feet,  the  Till  displays  itself  in  two  or 
three  miles  of  silvery  loops  amid  its  bordering  meadows,  and 
far  away  down  its  course,  over  the  tops  of  intervening  ridges, 
the  wooded  crest  of  Flodden  marks  the  neighbourhood  of 
the  Scottish  border.  Away  over  the  valley  to  the  west  and 


TO  CHARLTON  AND  CHILLINGHAM          91 

south-west,  further  than  eye  can  mark  on  the  clearest  of 
days,  spread  the  illimitable  solitudes  of  the  Northumbrian 
borderland.  One  sees  too  in  a  moment  why  the  faggots 
were  kept  here  ready  for  the  match,  and  why  it  was  that 
the  flaming  beacon  on  Ros,  above  all  others,  gave  timely 
warning  to  the  men  of  Alnwick,  and  the  flat  country  behind 
it,  that  the  Scots  had  crossed  the  Tweed.  In  the  actual  fore- 
ground of  our  outpost  height,  however,  waving  southward 
from  its  very  shoulders,  are  the  heathy  solitudes  of  this 
central  range,  over  which  you  may  wander  back  again  for 
miles  in  the  direction  of  Embleton  or  Alnwick  without 
encountering  any  human  life  worth  speaking  of. 

It  was  on  another  brilliant  day  in  this  same  July,  with 
the  better  half  of  it  before  me,  that  I  found  myself  at  Ros 
castle  with  a  companion  who  knew  the  tortuous,  but  still 
negotiable,  tracks  threading  the  heart  of  the  waste,  and  had 
an  acquaintance  with  such  lonely  souls  as  lead  contented 
but  laborious  days  thereon.  We  had  crossed  the  hills  from 
Embleton  by  way  of  South  Charlton,  at  which  point  they 
filter  out  into  a  narrower  and  lower  ridge  of  large  enclosures 
and  fern-decked  sheep  pastures.  We  had  dropped  thence 
beside  a  brawling  stream  into  the  valley  that  soon  receives 
the  Till,  or  the  Breamish,  as  it  is  called  in  youth.  There, 
striking  the  Alnwick  and  Wooler  road,  we  faced  north, 
hugging  the  western  base  of  the  hills,  and  passing  in  due 
course  the  pleasant  village  of  Eglingham.  And  so  by  Ber- 
wick to  Chillingham,  where  a  steep  and  stony  lane  climbed 
in  tortuous  fashion  through  sun  and  shade  on  to  the  moor- 
land, within  a  ten  minutes'  walk  of  the  summit  of  Ros  castle. 
It  was  now  close  upon  August,  and  the  heather,  which  in 
great  part  covered  the  surrounding  waste,  was  rapidly  spreading 
its  purple  robe.  The  solitude  on  these  Chillingham  and 
Chatton  moors  was,  of  course,  not  comparable  to  that  which 
broods  over  those  greater  wastes  of  Cheviot  and  Tyndale  to 
the  westward,  where  we  shall  find  ourselves  later.  But  so 
far  as  it  went,  for  many  miles  at  any  rate,  in  all  directions 
it  was  of  the  upper,  not  of  the  lower  world — a  land  of  sheep 


92       THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

and  grouse,  but  of  few  men.  It  took  my  fancy  no  little,  this 
fifteen  or  twenty  square  miles  of  high  undulating  moorland, 
intrenched  upon  all  sides  by  civilization,  yet  so  absolutely 
silent  and  so  wholly  aloof  from  it.  At  the  head  of  the  two 
Tynes,  the  Coquet  or  the  Rede,  or  again  in  the  Cheviots, 
you  expect  to  lose  yourself  from  the  world  for  as  long  as 
you  please  and  far  as  you  like.  But,  after  all,  it  is  these 
unexpected  patches  of  moorland,  so  characteristic  of  North- 
umberland, which  make  for  that  delightful  variety  which  is 
one  of  its  leading  features.  There  are  foregrounds  betimes 
as  flat  and  park-like  and  domestic  as  Northamptonshire, 
without  a  hill  worth  mentioning  in  sight.  Yet  in  two  or 
three  miles  the  high  road  may  break  out  suddenly  on  to 
the  edge  of  a  heathery  waste,  where  a  grouse  or  a  blackcock 
may  spring  at  a  moment,  or  the  cry  of  a  curlew  tell  its  sure 
tale  of  solitude. 

In  the  five  or  six  miles  of  our  leisurely  progress  through 
the  heart  of  the  moor  we  encountered  four  human  habita- 
tions, at  three  of  which  my  companion  had  reason  to  call  and 
halt  awhile.  The  fourth  was  momentarily  deserted,  for  on 
the  previous  day,  during  the  worst  thunderstorm  I  have  seen 
for  many  years,  the  lightning  had  come  down  the  chimney, 
shattering  the  brickwork,  and  killing  a  dog  that  lay  on  the 
hearth  in  the  centre  of  a  group  of  children,  who  remained 
unscathed.  As  the  bearers  of  so  altogether  sensational  a 
piece  of  news,  fortuitously  gathered  by  the  way  from  a 
postman,  we  were  not  merely  welcome  as  rare  visitants  from 
the  outer  world,  but  gossips  of  the  first  importance  ;  par- 
ticularly at  the  first  domicile,  which  was  that  of  a  large 
farmer,  owner  of  considerable  flocks,  who  was  chafing  in  an 
armchair  from  the  effects  of  a  fall  from  his  horse.  Our  next 
visit  was  to  a  smaller  establishment,  where  a  capable  lady, 
obviously  well  qualified  to  manage  a  sheep-run,  enjoyed  my 
companion's  budget  of  news,  while  her  dependents  plied  an 
industrious  knife  and  fork  through  an  open  door,  and  rallied 
one  another  in  the  purest  Northumbrian.  A  wind-swept 
domicile,  indeed,  was  this,  unprotected  by  bush  or  tree  ;  a  few 


TO  CHARLTON   AND  CHILLINGHAM          93 

yards  of  vegetable  garden  sheltered  by  a  big  hedge  was  the 
only  break  in  the  moor  grass  and  heather,  which  grew  up  to 
the  very  walls.  The  next  house  was  a  further  drop  in  the 
social  scale — that  of  a  Scotch  shepherd  ;  and  by  this  time  the 
moor  air  had  provoked  an  inopportune  craving  for  sustenance. 
But  the  sight  of  our  fair  hostess — for  she  was  of  a  truth 
exceeding  fair — plunged  in  her  washing  tubs  among  her  ruddy 
offspring,  promised  to  thwart  our  designs  on  her  loaf  and  tea- 
pot, for  we  had  not  the  heart  to  propose  such  a  disturbance 
of  so  important  a  domestic  function.  But  once  within  doors — 
for  my  companion  was  slightly  acquainted  and  had  a  message 
to  deliver — she  divined  out  of  the  very  kindness  of  her  heart 
our  situation,  and  overbore  our  stoutest  protests  unflinchingly. 
This  young  couple  were  from  Perthshire.  I  do  not  know 
whether  Perthshire  produces  many  pleasant  lassies  of  such 
natural  charm  and  unaffected  refinement  of  manners,  for  this 
was  no  ex-lady's-maid  polish — nothing  so  vulgar ;  nor  yet  any 
Sunday-school  grooming  from  a  model  village  :  just  a 
peasant's  daughter  from  the  wilds  in  the  north,  and  a  shep- 
herd's wife  in  the  wilds  here.  I  don't  know  what  Wordsworth 
would  have  given  for  so  admirable  and  graceful  a  daughter 
of  the  hills,  or  how  many  sonnets  he  would  have  indited  in 
her  praise.  The  least  touch  of  self-consciousness  or  momen- 
tary awkwardness,  venial  enough  in  any  young  rustic  matron 
under  the  circumstances,  would  have  marred  the  effect.  But 
there  was  not  a  trace  of  it  here.  The  average  village  belle,  of 
such  physical  advantages  as  this  one  still  eminently  possessed, 
would  have  considered  herself  as  thrown  away  on  such  a 
howling  social  desert  This  tall,  fair-haired  girl,  with  her 
blue  eyes  and  well-chiselled,  cherubic  face,  had  no  quarrel 
with  solitude,  nor  quite  obviously  any  suspicion  that  she  was 
not  quite  as  the  wives  of  other  shepherds  and  hinds.  She 
spread  our  simple  meal  in  quite  dainty  fashion  in  the  room 
where  the  washtubs  were  not,  and  with  much  more  despatch 
than  those  better-provided  dames  who  in  more  frequented 
districts  furnish  teas  to  tourists  at  a  shilling  a  head.  Then 
retiring,  with  apologies  to  her  tubs,  she  discoursed  with  some 


94       THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

humour  and  gaiety  through  the  open  door  of  her  last  annual 
visit  to  Alnwick  with  the  bairns,  while  we  did  justice  to  her 
fare,  amid  the  repeated  assaults  of  a  well-grown  pet  lamb, 
whose  ambition  was  apparently  to  dislodge  us  from  our 
respective  situations. 


CHAPTER  V 
BAMBURGH  AND  HOLY  ISLAND 

normal  method  of  procedure  for  the  pilgrim  to 
J-  Bamburgh  is  by  train  on  the  main  line  to  Chatthill, 
the  next  station  to  Christon  Bank  ;  thence  a  light  railway 
conveys  him  to  Seahouses,  a  hamlet  on  the  coast,  where  the 
fact  that  it  cures  as  well  as  catches  fish  proclaims  itself  un- 
mistakably at  the  first  moment  of  alighting.  Here  a  limited 
and  irregular  supply  of  vehicles  await  a  modest  but  quite 
incalculable  demand  for  them,  and  ply  along  the  sea-coast  to 
Bamburgh,  three  and  a  half  miles  distant.  The  situation  is 
therefore  one  familiar  enough  to  the  British  sightseer  in  rural 
places,  and  always  painful  to  the  sensitive,  the  leisurely,  and 
the  polite.  For  success  when  the  supply  is  not  equal  to  the 
demand  is  to  the  swift  alone,  or  rather,  to  the  prompt  and  to 
that  genius  for  arriving  at  a  much-contested  seat,  that 
I  have  sometimes  watched  with  admiration  at  Piccadilly 
Circus  on  the  approach  of  the  tea-hour,  when  the  Kensington 
ladies  in  their  battalions  are  homeward  bound,  and  each  halt- 
ing omnibus  brings  out  the  expert  and  the  country  cousin  in 
such  fine  relief.  The  only  occasion  on  which  circumstances 
compelled  me  to  this  method  of  reaching  the  ancient  capital 
of  Northumbria,  I  was  with  an  expert,  a  lady,  whereas  I  was 
myself  not  even  placed,  and  consequently  in  such  a  dilemma 
that  there  was  no  room  for  ceremony,  and  a  stout  gentleman 
had  to  take  me  on  his  knee,  whether  he  liked  it  or  not. 

From  Embleton,  however,  it  is  much  pleasanter  to  take 
the  road  at  once,  and  follow  its  devious  windings  through  the 
large  grass-farms  that  wave  smoothly  along  the  sea-coast. 

95 


It  is  about  eight  miles  to  Seahouses,  or,  rather,  North 
Sunderland,  which  is  practically  the  same  thing,  and  is  not 
a  particularly  memorable  route,  nor  does  it  even  touch  the 
sea-shore  at  any  point.  There  are  no  woods  to  speak  of, 
nor  any  country  houses  upon  it,  nor  even  any  churches,  unless 
the  scanty  ruins  of  the  Norman  chapel  of  Tuggall,  for  which 
you  must  grope  somewhat,  count  for  such.  This  last,  how- 
ever, is  a  little  relic  of  high  historic  repute.  For  when  the 
monks  of  Durham  in  1069  fled  before  a  Danish  invasion, 
taking  the  body  of  St.  Cuthbert  with  them  to  Holy  Island, 
they  rested  here,  and  this  building  was  raised  to  commemo- 
rate the  fact.  It  is  therefore  interesting  to  archaeologists 
also,  as  one  of  the  oldest  churches  in  Northumberland,  small 
and  ruinous  though  it  be.  Its  most  interesting  feature  is  a 
Norman  arch  of  unusual  fashion  dividing  the  nave  and 
chancel.  The  historian  coming  in  again,  tells  us  that  the 
bishops  and  monks  on  the  aforesaid  occasion  expected  to  be 
properly  entertained  by  the  wealthy  owner  of  the  surrounding 
acres,  one  Gillomichael.  But  this  inhospitable  churl  turned 
the  prelate  and  all  his  company,  together  with  St.  Cuthbert's 
shrine,  into  his  barn  for  the  night,  while  he  sat  with  his 
fdends  in  his  own  hall  drinking  deep  potations  out  of  golden 
cups.  It  cost  him  dear,  for  on  the  next  day  his  homestead 
took  fire  and  was  burnt  to  the  ground,  even  as  the  holy  men 
with  their  sacred  charge  were  wending  their  way  to  Bam- 
burgh.  Tuggall  Hall,  too,  no  doubt  on  the  site  of  the  almost 
sacrilegious  orgies  of  Gillomichael,  is  an  old  abiding-place  of 
armigers — I  forget  who — and  now  a  comparatively  venerable  as 
well  as  ample  farmhouse,  flanked  with  the  generous  buildings 
of  a  later  day.  On  a  windy,  uplifted  promontory,  too,  just 
beyond,  over  the  neck  of  which  the  road  climbs,  the  once 
famous  Northumbrian  race  of  Swinhoe  are  curiously  com- 
memorated in  two  great  homesteads  of  the  modern  type, 
occupying  the  same  perch  and  at  such  close  quarters  as  to 
suggest,  in  the  approach,  a  quite  considerable  village.  For 
the  rest  we  have  everywhere  the  same  wide,  sweeping  rect- 
angles of  pasture,  varied  occasionally  by  grain  or  roots  ;  the 


BAMBURGH   AND   HOLY   ISLAND  97 

same  Northumbrian  hedges  bending  their  straggling  tops  to 
the  wind,  that  whistles  freely  through  the  bare  stems  which 
support  it ;  the  same  noble  lines  of  haycocks,  weighing  a  ton  or 
so  apiece  ;  and  the  same  clouds  of  lapwings  "  tiring  the  echoes 
with  unvaried  cries,"  while  through  the  midst  of  it  all  a  little 
trout  stream,  born  away  somewhere  in  the  Chatton  moors, 
sparkles  cheerfully  toward  the  sea  over  its  pebbly  bed. 

Haymaking  in  Northumbria,  and  to  the  north  of  it,  is  not 
the  exact  science  it  is  in  the  south.    Without  much  ceremony 
the  hay  is  dragged  into  the  above-mentioned  "  pikes,"  and 
left  thus  to  decorate  the  fields  in  which  it  grew  for  a  con- 
siderable period.     In  due  course  each  pike  is  dragged  bodily 
with  ropes  on  to  a  "  bogey "  or  species  of  sled,  and  thus 
hauled  direct  to  the  steading.     The  older  Northumbrians  say 
that  in  their  climate  grass  will  not  dry  out  sufficiently  on  the 
ground  or  in  small  cocks  for  immediate  stacking  after  the 
southern  fashion.     East  Northumberland  is  not  appreciably 
wetter  than  the  rest  of  the  east  coast,  while  there  is,  of  course, 
longer  sunshine,  if  of  a  less  burning  quality  than  to  the  south- 
ward.    Personally,  I  have  a  profound  belief  in  local  customs. 
Incredible  though  it  seems,  I  have  witnessed  the  discomfiture 
of  even  Scottish  agriculturists  in  other  climes  by  a  contempt 
for  what  looks  at  the  first  blush   primeval  methods.      But 
there   is  one  thing  to  be  said   in  this   case,  for  giants   in 
agriculture  as  these  men  between  the  Tyne  and  Firth  have 
been,  and  sometimes  still  are,  they  were  not,  as  a  class,  till 
recently,  haymakers  beyond  the  seeds  and  clover  that  came  in 
the  rotation  of  tillage  farming  and,  indeed,  may  almost  be  said 
to  have  despised  it.     I  should  not  venture  even  to  hint  that 
they  may  not  be  entirely  right  in  their  poor  opinion  of  their 
native  sun  were  it  not  that  more  than  one  young  farmer  of 
my  acquaintance   holds   it  to  be   an  ancient    superstition, 
though,  I  dare  say,  their  hands  would  all  strike  on  the  spot  if 
they  put  their  belief  into  practical  shape.     At  any  rate,  the 
outer  covering  of  every  ton  of  hay  drawn  to  the  stacks  in 
Northumberland  is  more  or  less  spoilt.     It  is  pleasant,  too, 
to  see  the  women  in  the  big  fields  of  Northumberland  and 
H 


98   THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Berwickshire.     I  do  not  mean  merely  in  the  haying  season, 
when  you  may  see  female  amateurs  similarly  employed  any- 
where in  the  south — and  to  the  rosy-faced  stalwart  North- 
umbrian bondagers  the  hay  harvest  must  be  a  sort  of  frolic. 
What   a   fearful   ring   the   word   bondager   must    have  to  a 
southern    ear !      One   might   fancy   that   the   gorge    of   the 
member   for  Little  Peddlington  would  long  ago  have  risen 
at  the  sound,  and  that  such  a  fine  war-cry  for  enhancing  his 
political   reputation   and  discoursing   on    matters    he    knew 
nothing  about  would  have  been  irresistible.      One  can  only 
suppose  it  has  not  reached  him.     The  bondager  is  peculiarly 
a  Northumbrian  survival — the  term,  I  mean,  not  the  woman — 
as  a  field  worker.     She  is  to-day  far  more  numerous  north  of 
the  Tweed,  as  the  grass  movement  must,  unfortunately,  have 
enormously  curtailed  her  employment,  but  that  is  a  detail. 
She  does  not  work  here  to  eke  out  a  scanty  living  for  an  ill-fed 
family  of  children,  parents,  or  sisters,  but  because  she  is  used 
to  it  and  likes  it,  and  makes  for  herself  almost  the  wage  of 
a  Wiltshire   labourer,  without  the  burden  of  his   incidental 
expenses.     Her  men  folk,  both  in  wage  and  kind,  make  from 
twenty-two   to    twenty-five   shillings    a    week,   inclusive    of 
allowances,  and  she  usually  makes  twelve  shillings.     If  you 
saw  her,  dear  reader,  with  her  bounding  health,  her  blooming 
cheeks,  her  cheery  look,  her  brawny  arms,  and  her  warm  use- 
ful garb,  you  would  not  wish  to  make  a  draggled,  discon- 
tented, pale-faced  housewife  of  her — prematurely  aged  in,  too 
often,  ill-conceived  attempts  to  make  both  ends  meet,  with  a 
hankering  for  doorstep  gossip  and  tawdry  finery,  though  the 
bondager,  too,  can  dress  on  Sundays  and  can  well  afford  it. 

But  Seahouses  and  North  Sunderland — practically  the 
same  place,  the  former,  at  least,  with  its  fishing  folk  as  exclusive 
in  their  social  commerce  as  its  prototypes  down  the  coast — are 
again  with  us.  Following  the  long  straight  road  behind  the 
narrow  range  of  rolling  dunes,  betwixt  which  the  sea  twinkles 
anon,  its  blue  surface  flecked  here  and  there  with  the  red  sail  of 
a  fishing-boat,  the  basalt  crag  of  the  Flame-bearer  crowned 
with  its  amazing  load  of  towers,  fills  the  eye  with  increasing 


BAMBURGH  AND   HOLY  ISLAND  99 

grandeur  at  each  stage  of  our  approach.  It  is  now  high 
summer,  but  an  autumn  day  comes  back  to  me  on  this  same 
shore  road  when  the  fern-clad  dunes  were  aflame  with  gold, 
and  the  sea  lay  behind  them  with  glassy  surface  unstirred  by 
the  faintest  breath  of  air.  And  close  to  the  shore  the  whole 
of  the  Scottish  herring-fleet  lay  hopelessly  becalmed  on  their 
southern  voyage — some  forty  or  fifty  vessels  floating  motion- 
less and  at  all  angles  within  biscuit-throw  of  one  another. 
Their  full  red  sails  hung  listlessly  from  the  spars,  and  the 
whole  great  array  of  bright  canvas  lay  reflected  in  the  shining 
sea  as  in  a  mirror,  a  felicitous  grouping  of  hull  and  canvas 
rarely  offered  to  a  stray  wanderer  on  a  lonely  shore,  and  not 
often,  I  imagine,  even  to  a  marine  painter  in  search  of  subjects. 
A  week  afterwards  we  read  in  the  papers  that  these  Scotsmen 
had  been  caught  in  a  north-east  gale  off  the  coast  of  Norfolk, 
and  that  two  of  them,  failing  to  make  either  Yarmouth  or 
Lowestoft,  had  foundered  and  sunk. 

Bamburgh  castle,  as  a  mere  spectacle,  has  no  rival  in 
Britain  ;  and  in  the  significance  of  ancient  story,  scarcely  any. 
It  combines  the  vastness  of  Alnwick  or  Caerphilly  with  the 
pose  of  Harlech  or  Cerrig  Cennen.  For  it  stands  in  sublime 
isolation  on  a  huge  whinstone  crag  some  one  hundred  and 
fifty /eet  above  the  waves  which  break  at  its  feet,  while  on  the 
landward  side  the  cliff  is  so  precipitous  that  a  coin  dropped 
from  some  of  the  castle  windows  would  fall  directly  upon  the 
green  far  below.  The  ridge  is  long  and  narrow,  planted 
broadside  as  it  were  to  the  sea,  while  either  end,  both  north 
and  south,  dips  to  the  level  at  a  slope  sufficient  to  give  access 
to  the  castle  by  winding  roads.  Bamburgh,  to  be  sure,  has 
been  restored,  and  in  that  particular  Dunstanburgh  or 
Harlech  has  an  advantage  over  it.  But  though  one  would 
fain  have  seen  it  twenty  years  ago,  it  is  still  superb.  The 
great  square  Norman  keep  raised  in  the  time  of  Henry  the 
Second  upon  the  apex  of  the  bluff  is  original ;  so  are  some  of 
the  outlying  towers,  while  a  good  deal  of  the  curtain  wall 
enclosing  in  all  eight  acres  of  ground  has  only  been  patched 
and  strengthened.  Lord  Armstrong  is  the  present  owner 


100     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

and  the  restorer.  All  that  wealth  and  taste  can  do  to  retain 
the  spirit  of  the  past  in  converting  the  castle  into  an  occasional 
residence  has  been  done,  and  the  new  block  of  towers  and 
curtains  are  reared  above  the  precipice  at  the  south  side, 
leaving  the  ancient  keep  still  isolated  and  dominant.  In  the 
latter,  the  old  castle  well,  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  deep,  is 
still  kept  open.  The  imposing  main  gateway  to  the  castle, 
hewn  through  the  solid  rock  on  the  side  of  the  sea,  is  in  form 
unaltered.  The  village  lies  below  and  away  from  the  sea, 
and  chiefly  consists  of  a  wide  main  street  bordered  with 
pleasant,  mostly  old-fashioned,  well-cared -for  houses,  ex- 
panding in  fan-like  shape  for  the  better  enclosure  of  an  ample 
grove  of  trees.  Altogether  a  place  far  above  the  average  of 
Northumbrian  villages,  with  its  church,  both  interesting  and 
ancient,  set  back  in  a  wide  open  grave-yard  at  the  head  of 
the  street  and  looking  out  over  the  sea. 

It  would  be  hard  to  say  which  is  the  more  inspiring — that 
broadside  view  of  the  castle,  which  fronts  inland  towards  the 
village,  with  its  quarter  of  a  mile  of  Norman  masonry  cling- 
ing to  the  edge  of  the  precipice,  or  the  lengthwise  prospect 
from  the  north,  with  waves  breaking  on  the  rocks  below,  and 
the  older  buildings  grouping  themselves  in  gradual  ascent  to 
the  commanding  keep.  But  we  must  bear  in  mind  that 
even  the  hoariest  of  these  towers  and  curtains  only  represent 
one  of  the  greatest  of  Border  castles.  For  the  full  significance 
of  Bamburgh  we  must  sweep  them  away,  and  crown  the 
mighty  rock  with  whatever  may  be  our  conception  of  Saxon 
defence  and  habitation  when  Saxon  kings  were  seated  there. 
Mr.  Freeman  was  not  a  word  painter,  nor  an  impressionist, 
but  he  said  a  great  deal  in  very  little  sometimes,  and  that 
little,  in  his  moments  of  exceptional  inspiration,  was  moving, 
dignified,  and  sufficient ;  the  more  eloquent  in  its  very  brevity, 
not  merely  as  coming  from  a  full  heart,  but  out  of  such 
abounding  knowledge.  Unrestored  Bamburgh,  one  of  the 
cradles  of  that  race  for  whose  virtues  and  virility  he  pleaded 
so  hard  and  thundered  so  loud,  moved  him  even  above  most 
of  its  ancient  seats.  The  humble  pilgrim,  therefore,  may  well 


BAMBURGH   AND  HOLY  ISLAND  101 

feel  abashed,  and  keep  his  emotions  to  himself  when  gazing 
upon  what  was  once,  in  a  sense,  the  capital  of  England,  since 
Bamburgh  was  the  capital  of  Northumbria  during  its  brief 
ascendancy  over  the  sister  kingdoms.  It  was,  at  any  rate, 
the  cradle  whence  Saxon  conquest  and  Latin  Christianity 
spread  over  a  good  part  of  northern  England.  All  we  know 
for  certain  of  its  architecture  is  that  it  was  enclosed  with  a 
pallisade,  a  procedure  which  the  most  elementary  knowledge 
of  Saxon  fortification  would  have  assumed.  Its  Celtic  name, 
whatever  use  the  Celts  may  have  actually  made  of  its  im- 
pregnable heights,  was  Dinguardi.  We  also  know  that  this 
was  changed  to  Bebbanburg,  the  origin  of  its  present  form, 
in  honour  of  Bebba,  the  second  wife  and  widow  of  Ethelfrid, 
who,  in  607,  fell  in  the  heady  pursuit  of  distant  conquests  at 
Northampton.  It  may  also  be  accounted  a  further  note  of 
local  inspiration  that  Dinguardi  was  to  figure  in  Authrian 
romance,  which  is  strong  in  Northumbria,  as  Joyeuse  Garde. 

It  is  a  curious  thing,  and  accepted  as  reasonably  true, 
that  Ida,  the  first  Saxon  settler  and  founder  of  Bamburgh, 
who  reigned  here  eighteen  years,  was  succeeded  in  rotation 
by  his  six  sons,  whose  brief  careers  may  be  safely  attributed 
to  a  passion  for  arms  and  redoubtable  foes  rather  than  to  any 
lack  of  constitution.  For  the  Britons  and  Picts  to  the  west 
and  north  pressed  them  sorely,  and  for  one  brief  moment 
actually  expelled  them  from  Bamburgh  to  a  temporary  refuge 
beyond  the  tide-washed  sands  on  Lindisferne  or  Holy  Island. 
But  it  was  the  fiercest  of  them  all,  Hussa,  called  by  his  foes 
Flamdwyn,  the  torch  or  flame-bearer,  who  was  thus  driven 
to  bay.  In  the  moment  of  his  victory,  too,  the  much-sung-of 
Urien,  the  leader  of  the  Celtic  alliance,  though  himself  but 
Lord  of  Redesdale,  was  killed  by  a  traitor  in  his  own  ranks 
and  in  a  short  time  the  pendulum  swung  back.  Hussa 
carried  his  torch  and  his  sword  far  into  the  Celtic  country, 
and  restored  the  terror  of  his  name  by  vanquishing  and 
slaying  Owen,  "  Chief  of  the  glittering  West."  It  was  Ethelfrid 
in  the  next  generation,  called  by  the  Britons,  Fles,  or  the 
destroyer,  who,  uniting  in  his  government  the  kingdoms  of 


102     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Bernicia  and  Deira,  carried  his  arms  as  far  as  the  Welsh 
border. 

Oswald,  the  first  Christian  king,  who  some  fifty  years 
later  won  the  battle  of  Hevenfield  on  the  Roman  wall  near 
Hexam,  as  already  related,  by  the  sudden  conversion  of  his 
army,  held  court  at  Bamburgh.  A  popular  legend  relates 
how,  as  he  sat  feasting  in  the  castle  on  Easter  day  with  Bishop 
Aidan,  whom  he  had  imported  to  convert  his  people,  he  was 
told  that  the  street  below  was  swarming  with  starving  poor  ; 
whereupon  he  distributed  not  only  the  meats  but  actually  the 
gold  and  silver  plate  that  adorned  the  table  among  them. 
Upon  this  the  bishop  seized  the  king's  hand,  and,  blessing  it, 
declared  that  it  should  never  perish,  and  henceforward  he 
was  known  even  amongst  his  enemies  as  Oswald  of  the  Fair 
Hand.  The  lingering  flavour  of  his  piety  may  be  said,  even 
after  his  death,  to  have  saved  his  capital  from  destruction. 
For  after  he  had  fallen  under  the  fierce  pressure  of  the  Welsh 
and  Mercians,  led  by  Penda,  the  latter  piled  burning  brush- 
wood in  such  quantities  around  the  fortress  that  its  ruin 
seemed  inevitable,  when  Aidan,  from  his  lonely  refuge  on 
the  Fame  Islands  three  miles  away,  brought  about  a  timely 
change  of  wind,  and  saved  the  situation.  He  died  soon  after- 
wards, propped  up,  we  are  told,  against  the  west  end  of  his 
wooden  church  in  the  village  of  Bamburgh.  The  same  night, 
far  away  in  Lavderdale,  a  shepherd,  guarding  his  flocks,  beheld 
the  spirit  of  the  Saint  of  Lindisferne  being  carried  aloft  by 
angels,  and  vowed  thereupon  to  devote  his  life  to  Christ. 
The  shepherd  was  no  less  than  the  famous  Cuthbert,  who 
became,  in  due  course,  Prior  of  Melrose,  and  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Lindisferne,  and  patron  saint  of  Durham.  He  was 
a  contemporary  of  the  other  great  Northumbrian  saint, 
Wilfrid,  Bishop  of  Hexham,  for  Cuthbert  was  actually  born 
near  Wooler.  About  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  boundaries  of  Northumberland  being  much  contracted  to 
the  north  of  the  Tweed,  its  capital  was  shifted  from  Bamburgh 
to  Corbridge  on  the  Tyne,  and  so  much  of  its  glory  lessened. 
But  I  have  said  enough,  perhaps,  in  a  former  chapter  of  those 


BAMBURGH  AND  HOLY  ISLAND  103 

Saxon  doings  that  gave  the  great  rock  fortress  its  first  and 
greatest  importance. 

Yet  this  last  statement  needs  some  qualifying,  for  when 
Northumbria  became  an  earldom,  and  reached  again  from  the 
Humber  to  the  Forth  under  the  West  Saxon  kings,  Bam- 
burgh  became  the  vice-regal  court,  the  base  of  military  action, 
the  central  object  of  hostile  attack.  From  the  time  when 
William  the  Conqueror  made  his  desolating  march  through 
Northumberland,  the  castle  was  a  rallying-place  in  the  in- 
terminable wars,  local  and  national,  that  raged  unceasingly 
in  the  north,  and  almost  every  crowned  head  and  warrior  of 
note  for  centuries  had  something  to  say  to  it. 

A  sensational  incident,  too,  in  its  history  was  when  William 
Rufus,  who  had  recently  annexed  Cumberland — a  Scottish  fief 
— to  England,  was  besieging  Mowbray,  the  rebellious  Earl  of 
Northumberland.  For  other  methods  proving  futile,  the  king 
erected  a  huge  wooden  fort,  known  as  a  "  malvoisin,"  close  to 
the  castle,  and  compelled  his  knights  to  assist  the  rank  and  file 
in  its  erection.  Many  of  them  had  apparently  sworn  to  join  the 
earl  in  his  revolt,  and  the  latter  had  the  consolation  of  jeering 
at  these  noble  persons  from  the  walls,  and  calling  them  by 
name  as  they  toiled  at  their  ignoble  task.  The  humiliation 
of  the  coerced  aristocrats  was  intensified  by  hearing  their 
guilty  intentions  thus  disclosed  in  trumpet  tones,  and  the 
king  is  said  to  have  derived  immense  enjoyment  from  their 
discomfiture.  It  was  the  last  little  bit  of  diversion  poor 
Mowbray  was  ever  to  enjoy.  The  king  went  to  Wales  on 
similar  business,  but  he  left  his  "  bad  neighbour "  completed 
and  garrisoned,  sticking  to  Bamburgh  like  a  burr,  and  Mow- 
bray could  do  nothing.  Leaving  his  wife,  therefore,  in  charge, 
he  slipped  off  to  Newcastle  to  try  his  luck  there,  but  found 
himself  a  prisoner  instead  of  a  leader ;  so  when  Rufus  came 
back  to  his  malvoisin  he  was  able  to  take  Mowbray  with 
him,  and  threaten  to  put  out  his  eyes  in  front  of  the  castle  if 
the  countess  did  not  give  it  upi;  and  the  threat  proving 
effectual,  the  earl  himself  was  imprisoned  for  life. 

David  Bruce,  among  others,  was  brought   here  from  the 


104     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

battle  of  Neville's  Cross,  with  an  arrow  sticking  in  him,  which 
two  York  chirurgeons  ultimately  extracted.  In  the  Wars  of 
the  Roses,  Bamburgh  was  defended  by  the  Duke  of  Somerset 
and  Ralph  Percy  against  the  great  Earl  of  Warwick.  Queen 
Margaret  herself  escaped  from  the  fortress  with  a  French 
fleet,  which  was  driven  ashore  by  a  storm  on  Holy  Island, 
and  the  queen,  with  her  French  friends,  being  pressed  by  the 
Yorkist  army,  escaped  in  a  fishing-boat  to  Berwick.  Bam- 
burgh fell  on  Christmas  Eve,  but  was  seized  again  shortly 
afterwards  in  the  Lancastrian  interest  by  the  Scots  and 
French,  with  whom  Queen  Margaret  returned,  as  well  as  the 
unfortunate  Henry,  the  royal  pair  having  escaped  from  a 
stampede  of  their  friends  at  Norham,  and  wandered  for  five 
days  with  scarcely  bread  to  eat.  Once  more  the  queen 
sailed  with  a  French  convoy  for  the  Continent,  while  Henry 
held  his  court  at  Bamburgh  for  nine  brief  months  of  com- 
parative quiet,  till  the  Yorkists  became  active  again,  and 
carrying  Dunstanburgh  by  storm,  put  Henry  in  such  peril 
that,  fearful  of  being  entrapped,  he  and  his  party  cut  their 
way  through  and  escaped. 

In  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  Bamburgh  came  under  the  rule 
of  the  Forsters,  who  figured  so  prominently  and  profited  so 
much  during  the  long  suppression  of  their  great  neighbours, 
the  Percies.  First  as  Wardens  of  the  March,  and  then  as 
owners  by  deed  of  James  the  First,  of  the  castle  and  manor, 
they  are  wholly  identified  with  it.  Three  generations  of  en- 
deavour, it  may  be  supposed,  to  live  up  to  such  an  illustrious 
possession,  or  at  any  rate  of  lavish  expenditure,  found  them 
early  in  the  eighteenth  century  face  to  face  with  bankruptcy. 
Thrown  on  the  market  by  order  of  the  court,  the  estates  were 
purchased  by  Lord  Crewe,  the  Bishop  of  Durham,  who  late 
in  life  married  a  lady  of  the  Forster  family.  The  bishop's 
exalted  ecclesiastical  position  had  been  due  in  great  measure 
to  his  good  looks  and  agreeable  qualities.  A  favourite  of 
Charles  the  Second  and  his  brother,  he  was  made  Bishop  of 
Durham  at  the  age  of  forty-two,  and  became  a  staunch 
supporter  of  James  in  his  unpopular  measures.  He  continued 


BAMBURGH  AND   HOLY  ISLAND  105 

to  flourish  at  court,  though  naturally  with  less  prominence, 
through  the  reigns  of  Dutch  William,  Anne,  and  into  that  of 
George  the  First,  being  nearly  ninety  when  he  died.  A 
courtier,  and  an  influential  one  when  there  was  any  sunshine 
for  him  to  bask  in,  he  was,  nevertheless,  a  zealous  and  con- 
scientious prelate.  He  maintained  a  state  worthy  of  the 
traditions  of  Durham,  but  exercised  at  the  same  time  both 
widespread  and  judicious  charities.  When  his  youth  was 
urged  as  his  disqualification  for  its  episcopal  throne,  Charles 
replied  with  characteristic  gaiety,  that  it  was  a  fault  he  would 
mend  of  every  day.  At  fifty-eight,  still  unwedded,  he  pro- 
posed marriage  to  Dorothea,  daughter  of  Sir  William  Forster, 
of  Bamburgh,  a  local  beauty,  whose  portrait  may  be  seen  in 
the  castle,  and  who  blushingly  urged  that  "she  was  too 
young,"  and  stuck  to  it.  Having  succeeded  in  matrimony 
elsewhere,  but  in  the  mean  time  lost  his  wife,  his  lordship 
came  back  to  Bamburgh,  and  proposed  again  to  his  first  love, 
now  ten  years  older.  She  accepted  him  this  time,  as  all 
readers  of  Besant's  novel,  "Dorothy  Forster,"  will  re- 
member. He  had  now  succeeded  to  the  title  of  his  brother, 
the  first  baron,  and  was  a  very  great  personage  indeed,  as 
well  as  a  wealthy,  and,  I  should  think,  a  wise  one.  Most  of 
all,  perhaps,  he  shone  in  the  making  of  his  will,  of  which  a 
word  immediately.  But  in  the  mean  time  one  of  the  least, 
probably,  of  the  Forsters  achieved  a  name  more  familiar  to 
posterity  than  any  other  of  that  enduring  and  locally  con- 
spicuous stock,  namely,  that  Thomas  Forster,  junior,  general- 
in-chief  of  the  rising  of  1715.  He  is  quite  an  historical  figure, 
if  an  extremely  uninteresting  one,  but  for  the  conspicuous 
situation  that,  after  all,  was  none  of  his  seeking.  Indeed, 
his  individual  performance  almost  touched  the  verge  of  comic 
opera,  if  in  a  measure  redeemed  from  it  by  the  devotion  of  his 
heroic  sister,  provided  that  we  may  accept  the  story  of  the 
younger  Dorothy,  niece  of  the  other,  unreservedly.  The  tale 
of  the  'fifteen  belongs  rather  to  Dilston,  the  seat  of  the 
Derwentwater  family,  and  to  Blanchland,  the  home  of  young 
Forster  at  that  time.  It  is  rather  a  pitiable  story,  the 


106     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

English  part  of  it,  and  much  of  its  pathos  attaches  to  the  ill- 
fated  earl,  at  whose  deserted  halls  we  shall  later  on  shed  the 
tributary  tear,  and  doubtless  be  moved  to  talk  of  him.  It 
will  be  enough  for  the  moment  that  Thomas  Forster,  senior, 
the  first  of  the  disinherited  Forsters,  was  living  at  Adder- 
stone,  near  Bamburgh,  in  comparative  poverty,  helped,  we 
may  fairly  suppose,  by  his  rich  clerical  uncle,  and  that  it  was 
his  son,  an  average  young  man,  without  worldly  knowledge, 
of  sporting  habit,  and  a  good  Northumbrian  burr,  as  the 
warrant  for  his  arrest  politely  hints,  that  became  so  fortui- 
tously immortal. 

But  as  he  became  an  outlaw  on  the  Continent,  and  there 
were  no  Forsters  sufficiently  near  the  bishop  to  engage  his 
interest,  the  latter  left  the  Bamburgh  estates  to  various 
charities,  which  to  this  day  are  known  and  administered  as  the 
Crewe  Trust,  and  all  admirable  in  application  ;  such  as  the 
augmentation  of  poor  livings,  the  erection  of  churches, 
the  support  of  education,  the  relief  of  the  poor,  the  mainten- 
ance of  a  lifeboat  and  other  helpful  precautions  connected 
with  the  dangers  of  this  stormy  coast  Sixty  years  ago  the 
income  had  increased  to  the  sum  of  ^10,000  a  year,  and  is 
now,  no  doubt,  very  much  more.  I  imagine  as  a  magnificent 
private  charity  it  is  somewhat  unique,  and  for  over  a 
century  and  a  half  the  ruined  towers  of  Bamburgh  were 
its  romantic  headquarters  and  the  centre  of  its  distribu- 
tion. The  recent  purchase  of  the  estate,  or  part  of  it,  by 
Lord  Armstrong  has,  no  doubt  altered  to  some  extent  the 
machinery  of  the  Trust,  but  that  is  quite  irrelevant  to  these 
pages. 

A  notable  administrator  of  the  Crewe  Trust  in  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century  was  Dr.  Sharp,  Archdeacon  of 
Northumberland  and  Vicar  of  Bamburgh,  who  made  part  of 
the  castle  habitable,  lived  in  it,  and  bequeathed  to  it  his 
library  and  added  money  to  the  endowment ;  while  in  his 
day,  and  for  long  afterwards,  some  thirty  odd  girls  were  sup- 
ported there  from  childhood  and  trained  to  service.  Finally, 
it  may  be  noted  that  under  present  arrangements  the  castle, 


BAMBURGH  AND   HOLY  ISLAND  107 

which  contains  a  good  many  relics  of  olden  times,  is  open  to 
visitors  once  a  week. 

Looking  seaward  from  the  inner  bailey  of  the  castle,  the 
Fame  islands  lie  some  three  miles  away  and  nearly  two  from 
the  mainland,  a  striking  group  over  twenty  in  number,  the 
smaller  ones  mere  outlying  fragments  of  rock,  but  sufficient, 
with  anything  of  a  breeze  from  the  north  or  east,  to  provoke 
a  greater  fury  in  the  advancing  waves.  Ever  since  sea  coal 
fires  were  burnt  there  in  the  time  of  the  Stuarts  for  the 
guidance  of  mariners,  till  now  when  lighthouses  and  a  fog- 
horn proclaim  the  whereabouts  of  this  wide,  wandering  archi- 
pelago, the  Fame  have  been  a  conspicuous  feature  in  North 
Sea  navigation.  But  they  have  been  a  great  deal  more  than 
this.  For  on  the  nearest,  some  twelve  acres  or  more  in 
extent,  which  presents  the  line  of  a  sheer  black  cliff  some 
hundred  feet  high  along  its  visible  shore,  saints,  bishops, 
canons,  deans,  and  holy  men  of  all  kinds,  have  been  temporary 
or  protracted  sojourners.  Here  St.  Aidan  used  to  retire 
from  Lindisferne  for  weeks  of  prayer  and  private  encounters 
with  Satan,  and  it  was  from  this  point,  it  may  be  remembered, 
he  shifted  the  wind  when  Penda's  fires  threatened  destruction 
to  Bamburgh.  Here  came  his  successor  at  Lindisferne,  St. 
Cuthbert,  for  whole  years — nine  it  is  said — of  hard  fare  and 
pious  meditation.  The  venerable  Bede,  who,  it  may  be 
remembered,  was  by  residence  a  Tynesider,  describes  the 
simple  establishment  of  the  saint,  his  circular  hut  and  oratory, 
his  larger  dwelling  for  the  entertainment  of  his  visitors.  On 
the  few  acres  of  the  island  that  are  not  solid  rock  he  raised 
crops  of  bere,  while  fish  and  fowl — the  latter  swarming  here 
even  now,  if  not  of  a  tasty  kind — were  plentiful.  King  Egfrid 
and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  braved  the  terrors  of  the 
passage  to  solicit  his  acceptance  of  the  Bishopric  of  Hexham. 
But  either  from  preternatural  modesty,  or  because  he  had  his 
eye  on  his  own  diocese  of  Lindisferne,  he  resisted  their 
importunities  till  the  offer  of  the  latter  relieved  him  from  any 
more  of  them.  But  even  the  dignities  of  high  office  could 
not  altogether  wean  him  from  his  storm-beaten  rock.  For 


108     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

in  no  long  time  he  returned  there,  only  to  die  after  a  few 
weeks  of  suffering  and  solitude.  His  body  was  brought  to 
Lindisferne,  and  buried  near  the  altar  in  its  abbey.  Fired 
by  the  example  of  the  pious  Cuthbert,  a  succession  of  hermits, 
sometimes  singly  and  sometimes  in  couples,  who  often  fell 
out,  occupied  the  sacred  spot.  A  monk  in  the  time  of  Henry 
the  Second  spent  over  forty  years  there.  The  last  hermit 
appears  to  have  been  a  Prior  of  Durham,  whom  the  Chapter 
elected  bishop  against  the  wishes  of  Henry  the  Third.  This, 
no  doubt,  was  in  one  of  the  many  interludes  of  his  harassed 
reign,  when  it  seemed  safe  to  take  liberties  with  him  ;  and  we 
may  assume  that  it  was  when  he  had  shaken  off  his  barons 
for  the  moment  that  the  home-made  bishop  found  it  prudent 
to  take  ship  for  the  Fame.  After  this,  the  spot  seems  to 
have  been  constituted  a  regular  cell  for  two  monks  in  con- 
nection with  Durham,  and  thus  continued  till  the  Dissolution. 
The  tale  of  all  these  adventurous  and  pious  landowners 
causes  me  some  shame  in  the  admission  that  I  never  got  to 
the  Fame.  A  three-mile  row  from  North  Sunderland  sounds 
a  simple  matter  on  paper,  but  some  previous  formalities  have 
to  be  gone  through ;  the  tides  are  strong,  and  the  weather 
must  be  of  a  tranquil  and  settled  description,  or  your  sojourn 
there  may  be  prolonged  indefinitely ;  and  though  the  light- 
house keepers  have  no  doubt  sufficient  accommodation  for  their 
families,  and  you  would  not  be  reduced  to  sheltering  amid 
the  ruins  of  the  monkish  cells,  which  still,  I  believe,  survive,  it 
is  not  a  situation  to  be  rashly  courted. 

A  very  fair  idea,  however,  of  these  barren  islands  may  be 
gained  through  a  glass  from  the  mainland,  the  only  other 
inhabited  one  being  the  most  remote,  and  three  miles  from 
the  nearer  haunt  of  refugee  bishops  and  monks  and  light- 
house keepers.  This,  however,  is  a  mere  low-lying  rock,  the 
Longstone,  on  which  stands  the  lighthouse  famous  as  the 
home  of  the  heroic  Grace  Darling,  and  the  scene  of  her 
deservedly  immortal  exploit.  In  later  times  we  have  become 
possibly  not  less  heroic,  but  a  little  hysterical,  and  have  had 
to  reconsider  one  or  two  partly  press-made  heroes  and 


BAMBURGH  AND  HOLY  ISLAND  109 

heroines ;  but  neither  time  nor  reflection  can  ever  dim  the 
fame  of  this  one. 

It  was  on  September  5,  1838,  that  the  steamer  Forfarshire, 
of  three  hundred  tons,  was  on  her  way  from  Hull  to  Dundee, 
and  ran  into  a  fierce  north-east  gale  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Firth.  Her  engines  broke  down,  and  she  drifted  helplessly 
back  before  the  storm  through  the  dark  night,  and  was  driven 
at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  on  to  the  Harcar  rocks, 
about  half  a  mile  inside  the  solitary  lighthouse  occupied  by 
Grace  Darling,  her  father  and  mother.  Nine  of  the  crew, 
either  then  or  just  before,  lowered  a  boat,  and  by  good  luck 
got  safely  away  and  were  picked  up  by  a  vessel,  to  cut  a  some- 
what poor  figure  in  the  public  eye  at  the  subsequent  inquiry. 

In  the  meanwhile,  the  Forfarshire,  which  carried  over 
sixty  souls,  including  twenty-two  passengers,  had  broken  in 
half  within  three  minutes  of  the  shock  before  the  irresistible 
force  of  the  waves.  Her  after  part,  with  most  of  those  on 
board,  was  swept  away  to  destruction  down  a  roaring  channel 
known  as  Piper's  Gut,  while  the  fore  part  broke  up  in  a  quarter 
of  an  hour,  leaving  nine  survivors  clinging  to  the  bare  rock  on 
which  the  ship  had  struck.  The  sea  swept  over  these  help- 
less souls  continuously,  tearing  the  very  clothes  off  their  backs, 
while  two  children  of  eight  and  eleven  respectively  perished 
of  exposure,  with  their  hands  gripped  in  those  of  their  mother. 
At  daylight,  or  soon  after,  the  wreck  and  the  figures  about  it 
were  descried  by  the  Darlings  from  their  lighthouse  windows. 
The  father,  brave  seaman  though  he  was,  seems  to  have  held 
any  attempt  to  reach  them  in  his  "  cobble "  as  hopeless,  in 
such  a  place  and  in  such  a  sea,  though  a  contemporary  account 
says  he  actually  put  out  by  himself  and  was  beaten  back. 
His  daughter  Grace,  however,  then  twenty  years  of  age  and 
of  slight  physique,  though  skilled  at  the  oar,  overbore  his 
most  natural  hesitation  and  taking  the  other  oar  herself,  the 
two  launched  themselves  on  to  a  sea  whose  terrors  an  hour 
or  two  later  prevented  the  North  Sunderland  lifeboat  from 
completing  a  crew.  After  a  hard  struggle  the  gallant  pair 
reached  the  rock  with  its  half-perished  burden.  Darling 


110     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

himself  was  safely  landed,  while  the  girl  pushed  off  and  kept 
the  cobble  away  from  the  rocks  and  out  in  the  sea  till  the 
benumbed  wretches  were  prepared  to  make  the  risky  venture 
of  boarding  her.  Some  of  them,  however,  were  sailors,  and 
when  the  feat,  after  much  difficulty,  had  been  safely  accom- 
plished, their  help  at  the  oars  was  invaluable,  or,  as  Darling 
himself  declared,  they  could  never  have  returned  in  the  face 
of  the  tide.  But  this  too  was  at  length  effected  in  safety, 
and  the  rescued  people,  imprisoned  by  the  sea  for  three  days 
in  the  lighthouse,  were  kindly  ministered  to  by  their  rescuers. 
When  a  volunteer  crew  of  seven  men  in  a  large  cobble  from 
Sunderland,  after  great  difficulty,  reached  the  wreck  which 
had  been  observed  from  the  shore,  the  work  of  rescue  had 
been  accomplished.  They  were  unable  to  return,  however, 
and  were  compelled  to  seek  refuge  in  the  already  crowded 
lighthouse  for  the  forty-eight  hours  during  which  the  storm 
raged. 

The  fame  of  Grace  Darling's  achievement  rang  throughout 
England.  Meetings  were  held,  subscriptions  raised,  medals 
struck,  and  poets,  from  Wordsworth  downwards,  sounded  her 
praises.  She  was  offered  £20  a  night  to  sit  on  a  paste- 
board wreck  at  the  Adelphi  theatre,  but,  unlike  a  certain 
Highland  piper  not  long  ago,  scorned  the  notion,  as  she  also 
did  the  offers  of  marriage  which,  it  is  said,  poured  in  on  her. 
In  short  she  stoutly  refused  to  leave  her  lighthouse  home  till, 
developing  signs  of  consumption,  the  doctor  ordered  her  off 
her  native  element  to  Wooler,  under  the  Cheviots,  whither 
invalids  in  those  days  used  to  resort  for  the  drinking  of  goat's- 
milk  wey.  She  died  in  1842,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  just 
four  years  after  her  fame,  for  which  she  cared  so  little,  had 
begun.  She  is  described  by  those  who  knew  her  as  small, 
plain,  and  modest,  but  with  a  quite  extraordinary  sweetness 
of  expression.  She  lies  in  the  churchyard  of  Bamburgh,  her 
native  village,  under  a  canopy  which  also  protects  a  replica  of 
her  original  effigy ;  the  latter  having  been  removed,  on  account 
of  the  injurious  action  of  the  weather,  to  the  north  aisle  of  the 
church,  where  it  now  lies  beneath  a  stained-glass  window. 


BAMBURGH  AND  HOLY  ISLAND  111 

The  building  itself,  dedicated  to,  nay,  founded  in  the 
original  by  St.  Aidan,  who,  as  related,  died  in  it,  is  among 
the  more  notable  Northumberland  churches.  It  is  cruciform 
in  shape,  and  of  ample  dimensions,  with  an  "  engaged  "  square 
tower  at  the  west  end.  The  present  building  is  of  the  twelfth 
century  and  consists  of  a  nave,  two  unequal  aisles  and  a 
chancel  with  short  transepts.  The  arches  of  the  nave  are 
pointed,  resting  on  slight  cylindrical  piers.  The  tower,  which 
has  a  vaulted  roof,  opens  into  the  nave  and  aisles  with  three 
low,  deeply  moulded  pointed  arches.  The  chancel,  an  ex- 
ceptionally long  one,  is  lit  by  seven  and  four  lancet  windows 
on  the  south  and  north  side  respectively,  but  the  lancet 
arcading  is  continuous  along  both  sides,  as  well  as  across  the 
east  end,  which  contains  three  more  windows  of  the  same 
kind.  In  the  chancel,  too,  are  some  oak  sedilia  behind  railings. 
A  curious  trefoil  "  leper  "  window  near  the  floor  attracts  one's 
notice,  through  which  plague-smitten  persons  are  supposed  to 
have  received  the  sacraments,  and  opposite  to  it  there  is  a 
square  hagioscope  of  unusual  form,  crossed  with  stone  tracery. 
On  the  wall  is  a  tablet  to  Sir  Claudius  Forster,  the  first  owner 
of  the  castle,  and  a  monument  to  William,  John  and  that 
Ferdinando  Forster  who  was  slain  by  Fenwick  of  Rock  at 
Newcastle.  This  was  placed  here  by  the  elder  Dorothy  Lady 
Crew,  "  being  the  only  one  remaining  of  the  family,  as  a  last 
respect  that  could  be  paid  them  for  their  affection  to  the 
church,  the  monarchy,  their  country,  and  their  sister."  Here, 
too,  rests  the  helmet  and  a  breastplate,  said  to  be  those  of 
the  unfortunate  Ferdinando.  There  is  an  interesting  vaulted 
crypt  of  two  chambers  beneath  the  church,  which  formerly 
served  as  the  Forster  vault,  and  here  were  deposited,  besides 
the  coffins  of  the  above  named,  those  also  of  the  hapless 
General  of  the  'fifteen  and  his  heroic,  or,  at  least,  brave  and 
spirited  sister,  the  younger  Dorothy.  It  is  curious  beyond 
measure  that  two  women  who,  in  different  spheres  of  life, 
though  by  quite  different  standards  of  heroism,  have  won 
fame  and  immortality  should  rest  in  the  same  remote  country 
graveyard — the  Forsters  being  now  all  buried  under  the  vault. 


112     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Indeed,  the  heroism  of  Grace  Darling  seems  to  make  us  boggle 
somewhat  at  making  a  heroine  of  Dorothy'Forster,  but  in  any 
other  company  she  could  certainly,  and  I  think  reasonably, 
claim  that  title. 

But  for  all  the  richness  of  its  past  and  the  distinction  of 
its  site,  Bamburgh  has  no  small  attraction  for  those  who  only 
concern  themselves  with  to-day  and  to-morrow.  A  quiet 
resort  it  must,  however,  of  necessity  remain  for  its  very 
limitations,  though  every  corner  and  both  its  small  hotels 
are,  I  believe,  pre-empted  long  before  its  little  tidal  wave  of 
summer  visitors  actually  breaks  upon  it.  There  is  a  cheerful 
little  sandy  bay  to  the  north  of  the  castle  and  hard  by  the 
village,  overlooked  by  verdure-clad  hills  and  protected  some- 
what by  rocky  reefs,  which  bound  it  and  make  fine  sport  for 
the  waves  in  the  stormy  weather.  It  boasts  also  a  com- 
paratively new  but  most  promising  golf  course,  with  all 
necessary  appurtenances.  It  is  not  quite  the  real  thing,  to 
be  sure,  as  the  links,  using  the  term  in  its  generic  sense, 
shrink  to  quite  narrow  limits  at  Bamburgh  and,  on  the  north 
side,  cease  altogether  for  a  time,  the  coast  swelling  upwards  in 
grassy  sweeps  to  hilltops  crowned  with  ragged  rock,  so  it  is 
more  in  the  nature  of  a  down  course  overhanging  the  sea. 
But,  as  he  pursues  his  round,  the  less  critical  golfer  will,  no 
doubt,  find  consolation  in  the  glorious  outlooks  spread  before 
his  eyes  from  the  higher  greens,  when  he  has  duly  laid  his 
approach  shot  on  them,  and  again  when  he  has  holed  or 
missed  his  put.  If  it  is  a  windy  day,  and  the  tide  is  flowing, 
he  will  see  far  beneath  him  the  waves  surging  up  in  long  suc- 
cessive lines  of  foam,  pouring  over  the  sandy  bar  and  sweep- 
ing up  the  deep  quiet  bay  of  Budle,  and  just  beyond  it  the 
long  stretch  of  Holy  Island — now  near  at  hand  with  its  abbey 
ruins  and  high-perched  castle — while  to  the  west  is  the  bold 
group  of  the  Cheviots,  and  to  the  north  the  low  dim  outline 
of  the  Lammermuirs  beyond  the  Tweed. 

And'Budle  Bay  reminds  me  that  Bamburgh  has  a  dragon 
legend,  known  as  "  the  laidly  worm,"  or,  in  more  lucid  utter- 
ance, the  loathly  serpent,  of  Spindleston  "  heugh,"  pronounced 


BAMBURGH   AND   HOLY  ISLAND  113 

"harf  "  in  Northumberland,  and  signifying  low-lying  meadows, 
or  wet  land  ;  in  this  case,  that  alongside  the  Waren  burn, 
which  flows  into  Budle  Bay.  An  ancient  ballad,  composed 
by  one  Duncan  Fraser,  living  on  Cheviot  in  the  days  of 
Bruce,  seems  to  be  the  authority  for  the  tale,  and  in  a  more 
modern  shape  it  jingles  quaintly  through  fifty  verses  embalmed 
in  Northumbrian  lore.  It  seems  that  a  king  living  at  Bam- 
burgh,  a  widower  with  a  beautiful  daughter,  brought  home 
after  a  time  a  second  wife  who,  though  of  comely  form,  was 
in  truth  a  witch.  Jealous  of  the  girl's  beauty  she  turned  her 
into  a  serpent,  that  nothing  could  restore  to  human  shape  but 
the  problematical  re-appearance  of  her  brother,  Childe  Wynd, 
from  foreign  parts.  The  laidly  worm  in  the  mean  time  took 
up  its  abode  in  Spindleston  heugh,  where  it  consumed  the 
milk  of  seven  cows,  and  poisoned  all  the  land. 

"  For  seven  miles  east  and  seven  miles  west, 

And  seven  miles  north  and  south, 
No  blade  of  grass  or  corn  could  grow, 
So  venomous  was  her  mouth." 

In  course  of  time,  however,  the  Childe  Wynd  heard  what 
grievous  things  were  happening  on  his  native  soil  and,  calling 
his  merry  men,  he  built  a  ship  with  masts  of  the  rowan  tree,  a 
wood  proof  against  witchcraft,  and  when  the  queen  saw  his 
ship  coming  she  worked  her  spells  against  it  in  vain,  and  the 
Childe  ran  it  successfully  ashore  on  Budle  Bay,  where  the  laidly 
worm  was  gyrating  in  threatening  and  fantastic  fashion.  The 
valiant  Childe,  however,  drawing  his  "berry-brown  sword," 
advanced  to  the  combat,  when  the  monster  thus  addressed 
him — 

"  Oh,  quit  thy  sword,  and  bend  thy  bow, 

And  give  me  kisses  three  : 
For  though  I  am  a  poisonous  worm, 
No  hurt  I'll  do  to  thee." 

So  the  Childe  Wynd,  no  doubt  having  more  cause  for 
confidence  than  the  reader  might  suspect,  duly  embraced  the 
laidly  worm,  as  he  was  told,  whereat  it  crawled  into  its  lair 
to  emerge  almost  immediately  as  the  long-lost  and  beautiful 


114,     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Margaret.  The  pair  then  hied  them  joyfully  to  the  castle  to 
the  consternation  of  the  wicked  queen,  whom  the  Childe,  after 
giving  her  a  piece  of  his  mind  and  possessing  himself  some 
turn  of  magic,  transformed  into  a  toad. 

"Now  on  the  sand  near  Ida's  tower 

She  crawls  a  loathsome  toad, 
And  venom  spits  on  every  maid 
She  meets  upon  her  road." 

These  serpent  legends  are  prominent  in  Border  lore.  The 
Manor  of  Sockburn-on-Tees  was  held  by  the  falchion  with 
which  the  ancestral  Conyers  had  slain  the  worm,  or  serpent, 
which  kept  the  neighbourhood  in  terror.  As  late  as  1826  the 
Prince  Bishop  of  Durham,  when  he  entered  his  diocese,  was 
met  on  the  middle  of  the  bridge  by  the  Lord  of  this  Manor, 
and  presented  with  the  historic  sword  and  a  recapitulation  of 
its  significance  and  achievement,  after  which  he  returned  it 
with  complimentary  and  suitable  words.  The  Lambton  worm 
slain  on  the  Wear  by  a  crusading  ancestor  of  the  Durham 
family,  after  a  tremendous  struggle  in  which  the  river  ran  red 
with  gore,  and  the  nine  succeeding  generations  of  Lambtons 
who  duly  fulfilled  the  Sybil's  prophecy  that  none  of  them 
should  die  in  their  beds,  is  a  yet  more  notable  story  and  was  an 
article  of  faith  in  Weardale  till  the  eighteenth  century.  Just 
over  the  Cheviots,  too,  in  Roxburghshire,  the  worm's  hole 
of  Linton  recalls  the  exploit  of  a  Somerville,  who  was  granted 
the  estate  by  William  the  Lion,  and  whose  descendants  held 
it  for  centuries  by  a  like  service.  These  monsters,  however, 
were  not  bred  only  in  the  north.  The  serpent  of  Bromfield, 
near  Ludlow,  slain  at  last  by  the  incantations  of  an  Oriental, 
and  a  similar  dragon  vanquished  at  Denbigh  by  the  stout  John 
Salusbury  came  back  to  me  with  a  vision  of  their  ancient  haunts. 

Holy  Island,  the  ancient  Lindisferne,  is  an  object  of 
pilgrimage  which  every  one  makes  an  effort  to  achieve,  and 
it  is  well  worth  it.  There  is  only  one  recognized  method  of 
accomplishment  and  it  also  happens  to  be  the  most  stimu- 
lating, which  is  not  always  the  case  in  following  conventional 
grooves.  The  island  is  severed  from  the  mainland  by  some 


BAMBURGH  AND  HOLY  ISLAND  115 

three  miles  of  wet,  holding,  and  rather  muddy  sand,  which  is 
covered  by  the  sea  for  some  hours  at  every  tide.  In  the 
intervals,  however,  there  is  ample  time  to  drive  across,  spend 
two  or  three  hours  on  the  island,  and  return  again.  The  little 
station  of  Beal  on  the  main  line  just  north  of  Belford  which, 
by  the  way,  thus  serves  Bamburgh,  is  only  a  mile  from  the 
crossing  place,  and  from  here  the  jarveys  ply  into  whose 
hands  you  commit  yourself  for  a  passage  that  might  be 
exciting  if  they  were  not  so  familiar  with  it.  In  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Beal  station,  too,  innumerable  passengers  bound 
for  Scotland  must  have  rubbed  their  eyes  at  a  spectacle  that 
is  certainly  unique  in  these  islands,  to  wit,  a  herd  of  American 
buffalo  peacefully  grazing  in  the  pastures  adjoining  the  line. 
It  gave  me,  as  in  no  wise  prepared  for  it,  no  little  of  a  shock. 
These  animals,  which  are  attached  to  Haggerstone  castle, 
always  seem  to  me,  as  a  mere  passer-by,  to  be  as  peaceful  and 
domesticated  as  the  scant  survivors  of  their  race  in  the  paddocks 
at  Banff  in  the  Rocky  mountains.  A  local  friend,  however, 
who  once  had  a  guest  from  those  parts  and  thought  to  give 
him  some  passing  entertainment  by  an  interview  with  the 
Northumbrian  species  under  the  wing  of  the  owner  or  his 
representative  had  rather  too  much  diversion.  For,  in  spite 
of  this  personal  introduction,  so  to  speak,  the  animals,  being 
perhaps  annoyed  at  something,  proved  ungracious  and,  to  use 
an  expressive  Northumbrian  phrase,  shifted  all  three  of  them 
with  much  expedition  out  of  the  pasture. 

The  state  of  the  tide  regulates,  of  necessity,  your  day  and 
hour  for  adventuring  Holy  Island,  and  the  vehicles  awaiting 
fares  at  Beal  station  are,  of  course,  in  accord  with  the  same 
changeable  conditions.  A  two-wheeled  dogcart  fell  to  our  lot, 
and  with  the  driver  we  just  filled  it.  The  tide  had  receded 
some  time  as  we  left  the  shore  and  following  the  long  row  of 
stakes  which  mark  the  wet  track,  started  on  the  somewhat 
tedious  progress  which  is  mainly  taken  at  a  walk.  The 
heaviness  even  at  that  pace  of  the  draught  made  us  feel  how 
hopeless  would  be  a  race  with  the  in-coming  sea  under  such 
circumstances.  At  the  northern  opening  of  the  channel  the 


116     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

surf  was  breaking,  and  the  complete  hull  of  a  vessel,  which 
the  driver  said  had  been  cast  ashore  many  years  ago,  loomed 
up  conspicuously  against  the  sky.  It  was  autumn  on  this 
occasion,  and  in  the  broad  shallows  to  the  south  toward  Budle 
Bay  several  punt  gunners  were  afloat,  a  species  of  sport  for 
which  Holy  Island  is  somewhat  famed.  But  their  prospects 
in  the  still  atmosphere  and  the  bright  sunlight  seemed  to  me 
more  than  dubious.  One  or  two  pedestrian  fowlers  were 
abroad  on  the  wet  flats,  whose  chances  seemed  equally 
hopeless.  But  the  driver  intimated  that  the  method  of  these 
humbler  sportsmen  when  they  meant  business  was  to  "  howk 
a  hole  "  in  the  sand  and  there  secret  themselves.  There  were 
scarcely  any  wildfowl  on  the  wing,  but  otherwise  the  con- 
ditions were  favourable  to  quiet  enjoyment,  and  particularly  for 
our  purposes.  The  ladies  of  our  party  thought  it  would  be 
fine  fun  to  drive  back  through  the  in-flowing  tide,  a  procedure 
not  unusual,  I  believe.  The  driver,  a  taciturn  youth,  gave 
them  to  understand  that  it  was  quite  possible  their  wish 
would  be  gratified,  a  prospect  I  admit  I  did  not  hail  with 
particular  enthusiasm,  having  regard  to  the  nature  of  our 
cargo,  the  heaviness  of  the  going,  and  the  labouring  of  the 
horse.  Ladies  are  apt  to  be  reckless  in  the  hunting  field  till 
they  have  had  one  bad  fall,  and  on  the  water  till  they  have 
been  once  immersed.  I  noted  with  a  qualified  measure  of 
relief  a  roomy  box  on  a  platform  supported  far  aloft  on  stout 
stakes,  whence  a  ladder  descended,  the  purpose  of  which  was 
unmistakable.  This  eyrie  of  refuge  seemed  capable  of  holding 
three  persons  at  a  pinch,  which  was  also  well.  Twenty  years 
ago,  in  celebration  of  the  twelfth  centenary  of  St.  Cuthbert, 
thousands  of  persons  from  every  quarter  of  Britain,  professing 
the  ancient  faith,  made  a  pilgrimage  of  state  across  these 
three  miles  of  sand.  They  marched  bare-footed,  or  "  plaged," 
though  the  most  secular  persons  on  ordinary  occasions  and 
for  obvious  reasons  do  likewise,  bearing  banners  and  led  by 
chaunting  priests  and  monks  in  full  canonicals,  an  altogether 
memorable  and  striking  spectacle  I  am  assured  by  those  who 
beheld  it. 


BAMBURGH   AND   HOLY  ISLAND  117 

As  regards  its  shape,  the  island  may  be  roughly  described 
as  a  square  of  two  miles  in  diameter,  with  a  narrow  sandy 
spit  flung  out  more  than  halfway  across  the  northern  entrance 
to  the  channel  and  towards  the  mainland.  Much  of  it  is  of 
good  quality  and  under  cultivation  or  grass,  the  rest  is  dunes. 
The  surface  is  virtually  level,  and,  with  the  exception  of  the 
castle  and  a  small  farm-house  or  two,  the  whole  population  of 
some  five  hundred  souls  is  concentrated  in  the  ancient  and  quite 
considerable  village,  which,  at  the  south-west  corner,  clusters 
round  the  parish  church  and  the  splendid  ruins  of  the  Abbey. 
Here  is  some  approach  to  a  market  square,  with  two  or  three 
visible  inns  and  a  good  deal  of  red  tile  and  thatched  roof  and 
whitewash,  which  gives  the  low  houses  an  air  of  unconvention- 
ality  suitable  to  the  rambling  nature  of  a  village  that  has  never 
been  trammelled  by  any  particular  limits,  nor  had  to  adapt  itself 
to  any  through  traffic  worth  mentioning.  Here,  too,  is  a  place 
that  can  never  know  the  throb  of  a  motor.  In  the  middle  of 
the  square  is  a  modern  cross,  resting  on  the  base  of  an  ancient 
one  erected  by  a  Saxon  bishop,  while  scattered  around  its 
fringe  are  roomier  houses  of  sombre  aspect,  owing  to  the  dark 
whin  stone  of  which  they  are  mostly  fashioned.  Some  two  or 
three  score  of  summer  visitors,  I  am  told,  find  quarters  here 
in  the  holiday  season,  the  romance  of  being  on  an  island 
making  up  to  them  no  doubt  for  their  contracted  sphere  of 
activity. 

Upon  the  south  side  of  the  village  is  the  old  parish 
church,  and  covering  a  great  deal  of  ground  are  the  imposing 
and  still  ample  remains  of  the  great  Norman  fabric  raised 
in  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century.  Of  the  monastery, 
the  foundations  and  some  of  the  lower  arches  and  walls 
are  extant,  and  define  with  sufficient  clearness  the  nature 
of  the  different  buildings,  while  the  high  wall  enclosing 
the  establishment  is  virtually  perfect.  This,  however,  is  a 
good  deal  due  to  careful  excavations,  some  twenty  years 
aS°»  by  General  Grossman  of  Cheswick,  the  owner  of  the 
island,  though  the  priory  and  precincts  actually  belong  to 
the  Crown.  An  ancient  Scotsman — at  least,  he  confided  to 


118     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

me  later  that  he  was  born  north  of  the  Tweed — rose,  so 
to  speak,  out  of  the  tombs  in  due  course  to  confront  us, 
with  almost  the  flavour  of  the  preface  of  a  Waverley 
novel.  The  speech  of  a  lowland  Scot  would  certainly 
not  betray  him  in  north-east  Northumberland  to  any 
but  a  reasonably  wide-open  local  ear,  and  the  eloquence 
of  this  old  gentleman  was  only  equalled  by  his  zeal  and 
knowledge. 

I  am  not  going  to  describe  in  lengthy  detail  the  ruins  of 
this  once,  nay,  even  in  its  decay,  still,  stately  pile.  Concerning 
the  nave,  some  one  hundred  feet  long,  a  good  deal  of  its 
north  wall  remains,  with  two  bays  of  the  north  aisle  arcade 
sufficient  to  show  the  beautiful  moulded  Norman  arches,  and 
the  massive  piers  which  were  its  distinguished  feature.  Part 
of  both  transepts,  for  the  building  was  cruciform,  are  yet 
standing,  nearly  roof-high,  and  one  of  the  diagonal  arches 
which  support  the  central  tower  still  spreads  its  long  slender- 
moulded  shape  against  the  sky.  Enough  of  the  east  wall 
of  the  chancel  remains  to  show  the  whole  east  window,  which 
has,  however,  lost  its  tracery,  and  this  portion,  which  replaced 
in  early  English  style  an  original  Norman  apse,  represents, 
I  believe,  the  only  innovation  on  the  work  of  the  Norman 
builders.  Of  the  west  end,  which  originally  carried  two 
towers,  one  yet  in  part  remaining,  practically  the  entire  eleva- 
tion is  complete.  It  is  entered  by  a  profusely  moulded  round- 
headed  doorway,  flanked  by  Norman  arcading,  partially 
crumbled  on  either  side,  while  both  storeys  above  are  pierced 
by  large  round-headed  windows.  The  local  sandstone,  of 
which  most  of  the  church  is  built,  though  unduly  crumbled, 
gives  the  warm  tone  to  the  building  that  matches  so  be- 
comingly the  green  drapery  with  which  nature  decorates, 
sometimes  with  too  lavish  hand,  these  enduring  monuments 
of  ancient  piety  and  mediaeval  art. 

Lindisferne  is  the  work  of  Benedictines,  who  had  Durham 
in  their  mind,  as  is  obvious,  I  believe,  to  any  one  familiar 
with  that  splendid  fane.  The  monastery  was  a  large  and 
important  one,  as  became  a  spot  that  had  been  the  centre 


BAMBURGH   AND  HOLY  ISLAND  119 

of  a  bishopric  extending  from  the  Forth  to  the  Tees  for 
several  centuries.  But  the  ancient  church  founded,  as  we 
already  know,  by  St.  Aidan  at  the  dawn  of  Northumbrian 
Christianity,  with  its  one  or,  possibly,  two  successors,  was 
destroyed  and  its  Saxon  monastery  with  it  by  the  Danes 
in  875,  and  the  spot  lay  waste  till  the  much  more  splendid 
foundations  of  those  we  now  see  were  laid  by  the  Benedictines 
two  centuries  later.  The  fact  that  the  old  material  of  Lindis- 
ferne  Cathedral  was  used  in  the  Norman  priory  church 
sufficiently  justified,  perhaps,  the  poetic  licence  of  Scott, 
who  in  "  Marmion "  deals  so  largely  with  this  corner  of 
Northumberland ;  and  the  dreadful  doom  of  Constance  of 
Beverley  within  these  very  walls  will,  I  trust,  be  among  the 
reader's  abiding  memories. 

"  In  Saxon  strength  that  Abbey  frown'd 
With  massive  arches  broad  and  round, 
That  rose  alternate,  row  and  row  ; 
On  ponderous  columns  short  and  low. 


On  the  deep  walls  the  heathen  Dane 
Had  pour'd  his  impious  rage  in  vain  ; 
And  needful  was  such  strength  to  these, 
Exposed  to  the  tempestuous  seas, 
Scourged  by  the  winds'  eternal  sway, 
Open  to  rovers  fierce  as  they." 

The  desertion  of  Lindisferne  before  the  ravaging  Danes 
took  place  in  the  time  of  its  sixteenth  bishop,  when  the 
brethren  carried  with  them  to  Durham  not  only  the  bones 
of  St.  Cuthbert,  but  those  of  St.  Aidan,  and  all  the  fragments 
they  could  collect  of  other  bishops,  together  with  the  head 
of  the  saintly  King  Oswald,  their  lay  founder.  How  St. 
Cuthbert's  bones  were  brought  back  here  in  William  the 
Conqueror's  time  was  related  in  the  last  chapter.  That 
they  were  carried  again  to  Durham  as  soon  as  prudence 
allowed  may  be  noted  here.  No  great  additions  or  altera- 
tions were  ever  made  in  the  fabric,  which  gives  it  peculiar 
value  as  a  monument  of  Norman  or  Romanesque  art.  Its 
situation  on  this  lone  and  windy  isle  adds  a  distinction  that 


120     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

will  surely  move  the  visitor,  whether  skilled  or  otherwise  in 
architectural  values. 

Now,  a  village  church  is  unfairly  handicapped  when  thrust 
under  the  shadow  of  a  great  abbey — even  a  ruined  one. 
With  its  hoary,  weather-beaten,  unalloyed  Early  English 
character  and  quaint  belfry  this  one  would  beckon  to  the 
wanderer  from  afar  off,  almost  anywhere  else  in  Northumber- 
land, and  an  expedition  after  the  key  would  be  held  as  nothing. 
For  this  church,  of  all  churches  in  the  kingdom,  where  are 
neither  vagabonds,  tramps,  nor  ruffians,  and  whence  come  a 
small  but  steady  stream  of  respectable  and  presumably  in- 
telligent pilgrims,  is  kept  securely  locked,  with  the  key  lurk- 
ing somewhere  in  the  village.  This,  too,  when  a  relentless 
tide  is  waiting  to  swallow  you  up,  and  time  that  like  the 
other  waits  for  no  man  somewhat  pressing.  I  have  hunted 
church  keys,  I  dare  say,  as  much  as  any  one,  I  have  tracked 
them  from  house  to  house,  and  even  followed  them  into  the 
hay  and  harvest  field.  I  have  run  them  unavailably  to  ground 
before  the  barred  doors  of  ancients  who  are  charring  in  a  neigh- 
bouring village,  or  selling  eggs  at  a  distant  market.  I  know 
entire  counties  where  practically  every  church  is  held  as  a 
fortress.  I  also  know  adjoining  counties  of  identically  the 
same  social  quality  where  practically  every  church  is  open 
without  in  anywise  suffering  thereby,  and  have  wandered  all 
over  them  both  with  feelings  towards  their  respective  cus- 
todians of  a  most  opposite  description.  If  Wiltshire,  for 
instance,  leaves  nearly  all  its  church  keys  hospitably  in  the 
doors,  why  should  those  of  Hereford  be  all  in  the  grip  of  job 
gardeners  or  wandering  washerwomen,  both  counties  being 
populated  by  a  respectable  peasantry,  with  like  virtues  and 
vices  ?  These  last  do  not  assuredly  include  the  desecration 
and  plundering  of  their  churches,  while  that  potential  criminal, 
the  tramp,  cruises  about  either  in  equal  force.  Such  pre- 
cautions at  Holy  Island  struck  one  as  almost  inhuman  with 
.that  dove-cot-like  refuge  swinging  in  one's  mind's  eye  between 
sand  and  sea,  and  the  caution  as  to  punctuality  of  our  jarvey 
in  our  ears — above  all  a  jarvey  who  had  spoken  so  lightly  of 


BAMBURGH   AND   HOLY   ISLAND  121 

breasting  the  in-flowing  tide  with  his  labouring  horse  and  our 
precious  weights. 

For  there  had  been  other  things  to  do  and  see  besides  the 
priory  :  the  castle,  for  instance,  a  mile  away,  near  the  outer 
southern  point  of  the  island,  whose  walls  were  raised  on  a 
fine  isolated  cone  of  whinstone  rock  known  as  the  Beblowe, 
and  over  a  hundred  feet  high,  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth 
for  defence  against  the  Scots  and  French.  It  has,  therefore, 
no  feudal  significance,  but  in  boldness  and  symmetry,  as  a 
rock  fortress  towering  above  the  green  meads  and  sandy 
shores  and  commanding  a  vast  prospect  of  the  English  and 
Scottish  coast,  presents  a  most  ideal  picture.  From  hence 
you  may  not  only  look  back  to  Bamburgh  and  out  to  the 
Fame  and  inland  to  the  distant  Cheviots,  but  you  can  mark 
the  mouth  of  the  Tweed  and  be-walled  Berwick,  still  almost 
martial  in  its  pose,  and  away  to  the  north  the  eastern  Lammer- 
muirs  dipping  abruptly  to  the  sea  in  the  grand  headland  of 
St.  Abbs  and  the  grim  lonely  perch  of  the  Master  of  Ravens- 
wood  and  Caleb  Balderstone.  The  castle  was  used  as  a  coast- 
guard and  artillery  station  till  recently,  and  now,  like  its 
neighbour  of  Bamburgh  in  miniature,  has  been  adapted  to  the 
residential  needs  of  a  recent  purchaser.  It  is  from  distant 
points  on  sea  or  mainland,  however,  that  one  sees  it  to  most 
advantage,  where  the  boldness  of  its  outline  shooting  up  from 
the  flat  horizon  suggests  greater  bulk  and  importance  than  is 
discovered  on  a  close  acquaintance,  well  worth  making  though 
that  be.  The  base  of  the  walls  are  flush,  or  nearly  so,  with 
the  lofty  rock  foundations,  and  a  steep  path  leads  up  to  a 
characteristic-looking  entrance,  an  object  altogether  out  of 
the  common — a  page  plucked  from  some  Christmas  picture- 
book,  telling  of  brave  knights  and  fair  captive  maidens  waving 
handkerchiefs  at  them  out  of  barred  windows.  There  is  no 
particular  story,  however,  to  this  lone  fortress,  so  remote 
from  those  domestic  wars  that  were  beginning  to  sober  down 
even  when  it  was  built,  just  after  Flodden,  for  a  mere  outpost 
held  by  a  small  garrison  for  the  King  or  his  lieutenant. 
Indeed,  Lindisferne  itself  suffered  very  little  throughout  the 


THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Border  feuds  that  ravaged  everything  in  sight  of  it.  One 
may  fancy  that  the  sacking  of  monasteries,  of  which  the  Scots 
did  their  share,  was  often  the  afterthought  of  a  raid,  when 
the  men  were  excited  by  liquor  and  the  lust  of  blood  and 
plunder.  Lindisfernc  was  altogether  holy  ground,  and  there 
was  almost  nothing  to  raid  except  the  priory  and  its 
property,  and  the  act  would  have  necessitated  a  special 
expedition  in  cold  blood  and  very  wet  feet  for  that  particular 
purpose. 

A  somewhat  farcical  part  in  the  hapless  tragedy  of  the 
'fifteen  was  played  by  the  little  castle.  For  one  Lancelot 
Errington,  the  master  of  a  ship,  a  bold  resourceful  person 
and  an  enthusiastic  Jacobite,  captured  it  by  stratagem  and 
assault.  Having  invited  twelve  out  of  the  fifteen  soldiers 
who  comprised  the  garrison  to  a  feast  on  board  his  ship,  he 
made  them  drunk,  and  thereupon  proceeded  himself  with  his 
nephew  to  the  castle,  admittance  being  naturally  granted 
them.  The  pair,  pistol  in  hand,  then  turned  out  the  three 
remaining  occupants,  shut  themselves  in  and  hoisted  the 
white  flag  of  the  Pretender  on  the  tower.  This  was  espied 
in  due  course  by  the  loyal  folks  on  Berwick  ramparts  to 
their  amazement,  and  no  time  was  lost  in  despatching  a 
detachment  to  investigate  the  mystery.  The  redoubtable 
Lancelot,  however,  and  his  nephew  refused  all  terms  of 
capitulation,  till,  after  some  interchange  of  shots  with  the 
soldiers,  they  made  their  escape  -from  the  castle,  hoping  to 
hide  in  the  rocks  till  night  should  favour  a  passage  to  the 
mainland.  But  a  rising  tide  drove  them  from  their  lair  and 
they  were  captured,  Errington  being  wounded.  After  this 
they  were  taken  to  Berwick  and,  amid  the  mixed  greetings 
of  the  populace,  conducted  to  the  old  Tolbooth.  From  this, 
however,  when  his  wound  had  healed  and  with  some  outside 
connivance,  Errington  and  his  nephew  burrowed  themselves 
out,  crossed  the  Tweed  in  a  boat,  and  fled  to  Bamburgh. 
Here  they  were  secreted  in  a  pea-stack  for  nine  days  by  a 
friend  in  the  castle,  and  with  £500  on  the  older  man's  head, 
they  ultimately  reached  Newcastle  and  got  away  to  France. 


BAMBURGH  AND   HOLY  ISLAND  123 

After  the  general  pardon,  Errington  returned,  kept  an  inn  for 
thirty  years  in  Newcastle,  and  died  of  grief,  it  is  said,  on  hear- 
ing of  Culloden — though  a  publican's  ailments  are  not  always 
above  suspicion — an  honest  and  uncompromising  Jacobite  to 
the  last 

Another  sturdy  Englishman,  a  century  before  Errington, 
adventured,  though  not  in  his  case  wilfully,  on  Holy  Island. 
A  much  more  famous  person  this  than  the  other,  though 
neither  local  histories,  guide-books,  nor  antiquaries  know 
anything  about  it ;  nor  would  their  writers,  I  am  afraid,  be 
always  clear  who  Captain  John  Smith,  the  slayer  of  Turks 
and  the  Founder  of  Virginia,  was.  But  the  strenuous  Eliza- 
bethan and  Lincolnshire  yeoman's  son  tells  us  himself  how 
he  was  wrecked  on  this  sacred  but  rocky  spot.  As  a  young 
adventurer  in  a  brief  campaign  in  Flanders,  he  had  just 
whetted  that  maiden  sword  which  was  to  perform  such 
astounding  feats  subsequently  in  Transylvania,  and  he  was 
taking  the  first  of  those  many  sea  voyages,  rife  with  ship- 
wreck, battle  and  exploration,  that  he  afterwards  accom- 
plished. But  here  John  Smith  was  a  mere  peaceful  passenger, 
bound,  not  on  privateering,  but  on  quite  matter-of-fact 
business,  for  Edinburgh.  For  it  fell  out  that  a  year  before  a 
too  canny  Scot  had  crossed  his  path  while  still  a  callow 
youth,  making  his  first  visit  to  Paris,  with  no  experience  and 
only  a  moderate  purse.  Of  this  last  his  friend  made  so  free 
that  the  future  hero  soon  found  himself  penniless,  and  was 
compelled  to  take  service  with  a  troop  of  horse.  There 
had  been,  however,  some  exchange  of  favours,  for  the  pawky 
Scot  had  furnished  Smith,  then  an  ambitious,  friendless 
youth,  with  letters  of  introduction  to  persons  in  Edinburgh. 
It  was  with  these  belated  instruments  in  his  pocket,  and  with 
somewhat  ingenuous  confidence  in  them,  that  he  was  sailing 
for  Scotland  when  his  ship  was  cast  away  on  Holy  Island. 
Here  he  was  so  badly  used  by  the  waves  that  he  lay  sick  for 
some  time,  either  in  the  castle  or  the  village,  and  was  kindly 
nursed,  proceeding,  when  cured,  to  Edinburgh,  where  his 
introductions  proved  genuine  and  procured  him  much  jovial 


124     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

hospitality,  but  no  step  on  the  ladder  of  preferment  for 
which  he  was  looking.  For  ourselves,  we  ploughed  our  slow 
way  homewards  across  the  sands  without  adventure,  and 
reached  the  mainland  as  the  first  ripples  of  the  advancing 
tide  were  creeping  under  our  chariot  wheels,  and  the  sun 
was  dipping  towards  the  distant  Cheviots. 


CHAPTER  VI 
BERWICK-ON-TWEED 

OUT  of  the  chaos  of  former  days  sprang  strange  territorial 
divisions,  and  they  lingered  long  in  Northumberland. 
Till  about  sixty  years  ago  the  whole  seven  miles  from  Beal  to 
Berwick  bounds  lay  within  that  ecclesiastical  district  of 
Lindisferne,  which  formed  a  part,  even  in  a  civil  sense,  of  the 
county  of  Durham.  At  Berwick  bounds  again  the  traveller 
entered  a  little  county  or  kingdom,  whose  dignity  has  always 
demanded  special  mention  in  all  edicts  and  proclamations 
relating  to  the  Realm,  and  must  have  given  in  its  day  no  end 
of  trouble  to  heralds,  draughtsmen,  and  printers.  But  this 
other,  this  isolated  fragment  of  "  Islandshire,"  known  some- 
times as  North  Durham,  and  with  that  of  Bamburgh  and 
Norham  composing  the  "Three  shires,"  famous  in  Border 
story,  is  a  somewhat  uplifted  and  windy  but  fertile  country. 

By  the  sandy  wastes  of  its  seashore,  the  Goswick  Golf  Club 
have  the  best  course  in  Northumberland.  But  for  the  most 
part  the  district  is  a  triumph  of  agriculture,  deforested, 
militant,  and  unadorned,  as  if  the  close  neighbourhood  of 
Scotland  had  stimulated  the  rivalry  of  its  occupants  to 
supreme  efforts  at  banishing  the  superfluous  in  rural  land- 
scape, and  combing  and  smoothing  its  face  for  the  serious 
business  of  life.  There  is  something,  after  all,  lordly  and  mag- 
nificent in  the  northern  way  of  doing  these  things.  There  is 
nothing  of  the  petty,  miscellaneous  culture  here,  as  in  the 
unfenced  flats  of  Bedfordshire  or  the  levels  of  Belgium,  no 
ill-assorted  collection  of  animals,  no  patchwork  of  desultory 
cultivation,  no  groups  of  toilers,  dressed  as  if  they  had  been 

125 


126     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

fetched  for  a  week  out  of  the  slum  of  a  big  city,  no  ragtag 
and  bobtail.  High  farming  may  or  may  not  be  nowadays 
profitable,  but  it  follows  here,  about  Berwick  and  lower 
Tweed  side,  the  traditions  of  a  great  epoch  when  it  was. 
The  ploughs  that  one  behind  the  other  cut  their  deep  brown 
furrows  up  the  clean  thirty-acre  stubbles  are  not  drawn  by 
four  cheap  horses,  with  a  boy  to  lead  them,  and  a  leisurely 
veteran  between  the  stilts,  but  a  pair  of  sturdy-looking, 
briskly-moving  Clydesdales,  and  the  man  behind  earns  all 
told  about  three  and  twenty  shillings  a  week.  The  women 
pulling  turnips  in  the  next  field,  or  mustering  thickly  where 
the  lifting  ploughs  are  throwing  up  the  potatoes,  have  a  fine 
alert  professional  air,  and,  as  already  noted,  a  costume  that  is 
the  only  picturesque  thing  left  among  the  English  peasantry. 
It  is  a  significant  rebuke  to  the  cheap  and  tawdry  finery, 
the  ill-assorted,  tasteless  shoddy,  in  which  the  southern 
peasant  wraps  up  her  self-respect,  that  the  women  of  the  best 
paid,  the  best  fed,  and  perhaps  the  best  educated  peasantry  in 
Britain,  -should  remain  thus  wholesome  in  taste  as  well  as 
body.  It  is  in  keeping,  too,  that  their  sphere  of  work  should 
be  on  the  most  ornate  and  productive  farming  lands  in  the 
country,  for  East  Lothian  also  still  retains  them.  The  maid 
or  matron  of  the  Eastern  March,  on  neither  side  of  the 
Tweed,  wears  any  sense  of  indignity  on  her  cheery  full-moon 
face,  as  she  walks  down  the  village  street  in  the  working 
garb  of  her  order.  The  short  linsey  woolsey  skirt,  the  thick 
knitted  stockings  and  heavy  boots  ;  the  dark  blue  shirt,  the 
ample  bright  pink  neckerchief  bound  over  the  chin,  and 
brown  straw  hat,  are  articles  of  too  general  work-a-day  wear 
for  any  kind  of  school-board  manufactured  shame.  What 
would  the  anaemic  product  of  the  southern  village,  once  no 
doubt  a  rosy  child,  who  stands  the  clock  round  at  shop 
counter  or  restaurant, — what  would  she  give  for  such  com- 
plexions as  have  these  northern  bondagers  and  "workers," 
for  the  bounding  health  they  indicate,  nay,  even  for  so  many 
holidays,  for  they  work  by  the  day,  not  by  the  week,  and  are 
not  usually  wholly  dependent  on  their  own  exertions  ? 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  127 

Indeed,  the  maidens  among  them  might  almost  be  envied  by 
their  leg-weary,  ill-nourished  sisters,  those  frequent  oppor- 
tunities for  flirtation  that  lighten  their  wholesome  toil, 
boisterous  chaff,  no  doubt  in  sound  Border  Doric.  Perhaps 
the  southern  women  could  not  stand  up  to  this  man's  work. 
A  medical  acquaintance  of  mine  from  these  parts,  with  a 
large  rural  practice  in  the  south,  and  who  ought  to  know,  says 
that  they  certainly  could  not.  Baker's  bread  of  American 
flour,  washed  down  by  tea,  is  a  poor  mainstay  of  diet,  and 
another  matter  altogether  from  home-made  bread  and  por- 
ridge and  milk.  Unfortunately,  the  village  baker,  with  his 
insidious  white  flour,  has  already  begun  to  sap  the  north. 
The  porridge  bowl  and  the  cow  are  ceasing  to  be  the  staple 
of  its  diet,  with  whatever  accessories  good  wages  may  add  to 
it.  The  low  earnings  of  former  generations,  which  lowered 
the  physique  of  the  southern  husbandman,  left  the  vitality  of 
the  northern  hind  unimpaired.  For  porridge  and  milk  alone 
will  breed  and  maintain  a  hardy  race,  not  Canadian  Quaker 
oats  eaten  out  of  a  soup-plate  or  saucer,  and  sprinkled  with 
sugar,  as  the  polite  southerner  consumes  it  at  breakfast,  but 
porridge  of  Scotch  oatmeal  made  in  a  big  pot,  with  all  the 
virtues  incident  to  such  wholesale  preparation,  and  partaken 
of  in  portions  to  match.  I  remember  the  ceremony  at  a  great 
Lothian  farm  in  harvest-time,  when  some  fifty  hands,  includ- 
ing Irishmen  and  Highland  girls,  all  got  their  portion  twice  a 
day,  and  can  yet  see  the  portly  groom  to  whom,  as  the  only 
noncombatant  on  the  place,  this  important  duty  was  assigned, 
stirring  it  up  in  a  big  outdoor  stone  boiler,  where  on  normal 
occasions  in  winter  the  cow  food  was  mixed.  His  implement, 
if  memory  serves  me  rightly,  was  a  wooden  spade,  and  the 
perspiration  rained  from  his  shining  face  as  he  ladelled  out 
the  savoury  mess  into  the  wooden  "  bickers  "  of  the  attendant 
crowd. 

Old  customs,  however,  in  a  county  with  such  industrial 
openings  as  Northumberland,  are  inevitably  giving  way. 
There  are  nothing  like  so  many  bondagers  as  of  old,  nor, 
indeed,  are  so  many  needed  ;  nor  yet,  by  the  way,  is  it 


128     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

altogether  the  low  price  of  grain  *  that  caused  so  much  land  to 
be  laid  away,  but  the  scarcity  of  labour  at  a  former  period,  a 
condition  which,  I  believe,  has  been  somewhat  eased  of  late. 
This  is  not  surprising,  as  we  may  fairly  credit  the  British 
labourer  with  a  normal  amount  of  sense.  Putting  aside  head 
men  and  shepherds,  who  get  a  trifle  more,  the  present  wages 
of  a  hind  are  from  seventeen  shillings  to  twenty-one  shillings 
a  week,  with  a  house  and  garden  rent  free,  coals  led,  and  a 
thousand  yards  of  potatoes,  planted  and  cultivated  by  his  em- 
ployer, but  which  he  lifts  himself,  being  given  a  holiday  for 
the  purpose.  The  bondager  is  a  curious  survival.  At  one  time 
the  hind  was  by  agreement  bound  to  find  a  woman  worker 
to  be  employed  by  the  day  whenever  called  upon,  and  the 
woman's  name  was  not  even  mentioned  in  the  bond.  To-day 
this  obligation  is,  of  course,  waived ;  but  a  man  who  brings 
one  such  worker  (always  a  relation)  even  now  gets  a  good 
place  more  easily.  The  woman — wife,  daughter,  or  sister — gets 
two  shillings,  sometimes  a  little  less,  per  day,  and  double  wages 
for  twenty-one  days  in  harvest.  The  pair  will  therefore 
make  thirty  shillings  a  week  at  any  rate,  together  with  a  free 
house  and  garden,  and  about  six  pounds'  worth  of  potatoes. 
A  cow  used  to  be  owned  by  almost  every  family,  and  kept  by 
the  farmer  at  the  rate  of  three  to  five  shillings  a  week,  but 
this  admirable  custom  has  now  practically  fallen  out  of  use. 
Further  privileges  hardly  worth  enumerating  are  conceded  by 
the  larger  farmers,  but  enough  perhaps  has  been  said  to  show 
that  the  Northumbrian  labourer  has  nothing  to  complain  of, 
and  in  his  present  situation  would  compare  favourably  with 
the  most  optimistic  estimates  of  the  urban  enthusiasts, 
fired  with  visions  of  three  or  even  thirty  acres  and  a 
cow.  Some  of  the  bondagers  are  detached,  and  work  upon 
their  own  account,  usually  sisters,  and  are  given  their  houses 
free,  and  pass  locally  under  the  name  of  "cotters,"  corre- 
sponding in  some  sort  to  the  "  bothy  "  system  that  formerly 
prevailed  in  more  miscellaneous  fashion  in  the  Lothians  and 
now  abandoned.  These  particulars  relate  more  especially  to 

*  Greatly  advanced  since  this  was  written. 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  129 

the  Alnwick  district.  To  the  southward,  in  the  direction  of 
the  collieries,  wages  are  even  higher,  and  women  are  scarcer. 
Toward  the  Tweed,  on  the  other  hand,  the  latter  are  more  in 
evidence,  while  in  Berwickshire,  with  which  we  have  nothing 
to  do  here,  they  struck  me  as  more  numerous  still,  from  the 
fact,  no  doubt,  that  there  is  more  tillage,  particularly  potatoes, 
which  require  abundant  labour. 

But,  alas!  there  is  another  side  to  the  picture.  The 
present  generation  of  hinds  and  bondagers  are  the  last  of  a 
porridge-and-milk  bred  race,  and  they  themselves  are  falling 
utterly  away  from  the  good  habits  of  their  forbears.  Neither 
in  Northumberland  nor  Berwickshire  is  porridge  any  longer 
an  article  of  common  use,  one  of  the  reasons  given  being 
that  it  takes  too  long  to  prepare ;  and  another,  that  the 
labourer  no  longer  keeps  a  cow,  a  matter  entirely  for  his  own 
choice.  The  effect  of  this  upon  the  young  children  in  some 
localities,  I  hear  on  all  sides,  is  lamentable.  One  of  the  best 
authorities  in  the  country  told  me  that  for  lack  of  milk  and 
wholesome  nourishment  generally — not,  of  course,  for  lack  of 
means — many  of  the  children  might  by  their  appearance  have 
been  bred  up  in  the  slums  of  a  big  city.  With  the  oatmeal, 
too,  is  rapidly  disappearing  the  home-baked  loaf  of  whole- 
some flour  to  which  the  north  clung  longer  than  the  south. 
The  baker's  cart,  with  its  loaves  of  innutritious  white  flour,  is 
everywhere  in  evidence.  Ask  any  big  farmer,  Scottish  or 
Northumbrian  on  the  Eastern  March,  what  is  now  the  staple 
diet  of  the  women  and  children  of  his  well-paid  dependants, 
and  he  will  rap  out  at  once,  "  Baker's  bread,  stewed  tea,  and 
bought  jam."  The  bondager,  however,  still  has  the  physique 
at  least  of  a  sturdier  breeding  and  parentage,  though  even 
she  is  given  to  chewing  raw  rice,  lest  her  complexion  should 
outblaze  the  radiancy  of  her  smart  Sunday  clothes. 

I  do  not  know  why  I  should  have  paused  here  on  the  long 
slopes  that  roll  towards  Tweedmouth  and  Berwick  from  the 
point  of  the  Kyloe  hills,  and  given  way  to  such  wholly 
utilitarian  gossip.  Perhaps  the  contrast  between  these  smooth- 
shaven,  prolific,  and  rectangular  undulations,  and  the  savage 

K 


130     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

desert  that  must  in  bygone  days  have  surrounded  this  same 
Berwick,  a  very  cockpit  of  ancient  strife,  invited  such  philander- 
ing. Ruthlessly,  at  any  rate,  have  the  instruments,  human 
and  otherwise,  of  the  enterprising  agriculturist  swept  away 
every  trace  of  the  past  on  plain  and  hillside.  For  some  one 
was  nearly  always  outside  Berwick,  either  on  this  side  or  on 
the  other,  with  a  considerable  army,  since  a  small  one  would 
have  been  useless.  Ancient  stone  houses,  pele  towers, 
venerable  oaks  that  were  associated  with  the  signing  of 
treaties,  the  hanging  of  traitors,  the  penning  of  ultimatums, 
the  pomp  of  pageants  from  Rufus  to  Cromwell,  are  all  gone. 
The  fortified  tower  of  the  church  at  Ancroft,  for  the  protection 
of  the  parson  and  his  flock,  is  the  only  relic  surviving  of  those 
sanguinary  times. 

Two  large  suburbs  of  Berwick  lie  on  the  south  side  of  the 
Tweed,  Tweedmouth  and  Spittal.     The  latter — sprung,  as  its 
name  implies,  from   an  ancient  hospital — might  resent  the 
description,  for  it  lies  well  round  the  mouth  of  the  river  and 
faces  the  open  sea.     Once  the  haunt  of  nautical  desperadoes, 
it   is   now    a    modest    watering-place,   on   whose    tempting 
sands  Berwick  bathers  and  some  others  disport  themselves. 
Sheltered  by  heights  at  the  west  and  south,  and  baring  its 
breast  to  the  wide,  open  north  and  east,  its  strenuous  atmo- 
sphere is  written  all  over  it.     Tweedmouth  has   a  pleasant 
sound,  but  clustering  thick  along  the  south  bank  of  Tweed  it 
has  an  unpleasant  aspect,  modern,  raw,  and  quite  unlovely, 
with  a  population  of  nearly  four  thousand  souls.     It  is  an 
irritant  to  a  road  traveller  who  would  fain  approach  its  vener- 
able vis-d-vis  in  a  proper  frame  of  mind,  but  has  to  thread 
its   inharmonious   thoroughfares    on   his   way  down  to   the 
historic  bridge.     It  has  some  negative  value,  I  believe,  even 
in   an  artistic   sense,  as   a  safety-valve   for  such   moderate 
industrial  enterprise  as  may  occasionally  break   out  among 
the  Berwickians.     Still  one  should  not  speak  disrespectfully 
of  a  town,  even  though  it  strikes  a  mean  and  sordid  note  in 
an  otherwise  inspiring  scene,  if  it  covers  the  spot  where  kings 
have  often  camped  in  baffled  rage  or  bloodthirsty  confidence, 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  131 

and  where  even  parliaments  have  sat.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  railway  traveller  of  the  two  has  much  the  most  stimulating 
introduction  to  Berwick  as  his  train  crawls  slowly  over  the 
long,  lofty  viaduct,  and  beholds  in  front  of  and  beneath  him 
the  noble  river  spanned  by  its  ancient  bridge  of  fifteen  arches, 
with  the  compact,  wall-girt,  red-roofed  town  rising  to  the  low 
skyline  on  the  further  shore.  If  you  steam  into  Northumber- 
land above  one  of  the  most  imposing  spectacles  of  modern 
industry,  you  roll  out  of  it — for  Berwick  still  likes  to  think 
itself  a  separate  entity — over  perhaps  the  most  inspiring  one 
of  its  kind  in  all  England,  and  the  very  antithesis  of  the 
other.  Even  on  Westminster  bridge,  how  difficult  it  is,  in 
such  a  hurly-burly  and  amid  such  a  hopeless  transforma- 
tion, to  feel  other  thrills  than  those  concerned  with  the  glories 
of  Imperial  Britain,  so  eloquently  typified  by  the  flag  on  the 
House  of  Parliament!  The  savage  in  one  demands  blood, 
some  evidences  or  echoes  of  what,  after  all,  was  for  centuries 
the  business  of  life,  the  standard  of  worth  and  honour,  in  the 
scene  of  our  dreams.  I  admit,  unblushingly,  that  I  like  a 
town  or  castle  which  has  had  to  fight  continually  for  its  life, 
and  to  sleep  by  its  arms,  and  prefer  the  mouldering  shells  of 
Norham  or  Kidwelly  to  all  the  pageant  glories  of  a  Warwick 
or  Kenilworth.  In  a  Border  country  you  must  be  thus  con- 
stituted, or  you  won't  get  more  out  of  it  than  you  would,  let 
us  say,  out  of  Norway  or  the  Adirondacks. 

In  early  life,  with  little  more  than  a  Waverley  novel,  and 
a  "  Tales  of  the  Grandfather  "  equipment  with  which  to  en- 
counter the  genius  lociy  this  leisurely  progress  over  Berwick 
viaduct  was  always  to  me  a  brief  moment  of  supreme  mental 
exaltation  ;  not,  however,  upon  any  consideration  to  be  ad- 
mitted. With  the  wisdom  of  the  years,  and  no  shame  in 
them,  such  emotions  ought  surely  to  be  redoubled.  On  the 
contrary,  as  most  of  us  know,  they  are  grey  things  compared 
to  those  which  stirred  the  pulse  of  youth  when  the  outer 
edges  of  its  small  world  were  still  full  of  mystery.  But,  such 
as  they  are,  Berwick  still  goes  out  to  meet  them,  and  in  its 
present  aspect  does  no  great  violence  to  its  past,  while  the 


132     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

same  clean  buoyant  waters  sweep  under  its  walls  and  onward 
to  the  just  visible  surf  of  the  unchanging  sea.  The  castle,  which 
only  sixty  years  ago  must  have  stood  up  so  proudly  on  its 
western  edge,  was  demolished  for  a  railway-station  by  a 
generation  who  would  almost  have  blown  up  Westminster 
Abbey  if  it  had  stood  in  the  way  of  a  terminus.  But  this 
town  of  nine  thousand  souls  still  rises  picturesquely  from  the 
water-side  to  the  skyline,  which  again  slopes  out  and  down- 
ward to  the  river  mouth,  guarded  by  pier,  lighthouse,  and 
breakwater.  Berwick,  at  any  rate,  stands  precisely  where  it 
always  stood,  within  the  compass,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  ancient 
walls,  and  covers  the  same  ground  and  no  more  worth 
mentioning  than  it  covered  in  the  time  of  the  Plantagenets, 
to  whose  primitive  customs  revenue  it  contributed  no  less 
than  one-fourth  of  the  total  receipts.  For  that  was  the  only 
period  of  Berwick's  commercial  prominence,  not  having  yet 
been  reduced  to  the  single  and  unprofitable  trade  of  war, 
which  to  us  unwarlike  moderns  seems  somehow  to  make  for 
its  greater  glory.  The  picture,  as  a  whole,  still  remains 
tolerably  complete  for  us.  It  does  not  suggest  a  page  out  of 
Froissart,  like  Conway,  to  be  sure,  nor  yet  a  half-timbered 
Tudor  seaport  like  Rye.  It  is  essentially  of  the  north,  hard, 
strong,  and  stony  ;  age  and  youth  alike  disguised,  after  the 
local  fashion,  under  a  somewhat  uncompromising  exterior  not, 
perhaps,  altogether  out  of  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  the 
North  Sea.  But  this  grimness,  after  all,  is  greatly  modified 
by  the  praiseworthy  partiality  of  the  Border  people  for  red 
tiles.  The  town  slopes  to  the  south  as  well  as  to  the  east, 
and  as  the  sun  shines  all  over  its  bright  roofs  through  a  pure, 
crisp  and  smokeless  air,  you  feel  that  there  is  still  much  to  be 
thankful  for  in  the  outward  aspect  of  Berwick,  placed  as  it  is 
on  the  very  highway  between  two  peoples  long  united  in  a 
partnership  for  filling  the  earth  and  air  with  disfiguring 
objects  and  noisome  fumes  and  discordant  sounds,  and  in  a 
mode  of  life  wholly  conducive  to  the  uprooting  of  ancient 
monuments. 

The  High  Street  of  Berwick  climbs  steadily  up  through 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  133 

the  centre  of  the  town  from  the  seaward  end,  like  that  of 
Alnwick,  beneath  an  ancient  gateway  to  where  the  railway- 
station  has  usurped  the  site  of  its  once  conspicuous  castle  ; 
the  down  platform,  I  believe,  occupying  the  very  floor  of  the 
banqueting  hall,  where  such  a  store  of  kings,  and  sometimes 
men  greater  even  than  theJr  kings,  feasted,  no  doubt,  as 
vigorously  as  they  fought.  Near  the  foot  of  the  street,  the 
town  hall,  market  house,  and  prison,  under  a  single  roof,  rears 
above  its  pseudo  classic  eighteenth-century  portico  one  of 
those  characteristic  belfrys  of  the  period  to  the  height  of  some 
one  hundred  and  fifty  feet,  and  where  the  curfew,  though 
most  inappropriately  housed,  is  still  duly  rung.  Italian  in 
form,  it  is  of  local  design,  that,  namely,  of  a  worthy  burgess 
of  George  the  Second's  reign.  It  is  the  only  very  dominant 
feature  in  a  view  of  Berwick,  and  rather  suggests  one  of  those 
hoary  masterpieces  that,  beyond  the  Atlantic,  still  remind 
Philadelphians  or  Bostonians  of  their  colonial  period,  and 
makes  them  feel  sentimental  even  towards  the  Georges,  in 
whose  classic  architecture  so  much  of  their  early  history  is 
embalmed. 

But  it  looks  exotic  in  Berwick,  whose  modern  features  are, 
after  all,  much  redeemed  by  a  general  air  of  austerity.  It 
would  be  far  too  much  to  expect  of  its  aldermen,  that  they 
should  house  themselves  in  a  fashion  congenial  to  such 
dreams  of  Hotspur  and  the  Black  Douglas  as  we  pilgrims  bring 
with  us,  still  they  might  at  least  have  spared  the  castle.  But 
neither  the  highways  nor  houses  of  Berwick  need  detain  us, 
though  some  of  the  byways  down  by  the  river  are  quaint  and 
narrow,  and  of  unmistakable  antiquity.  Salmon,  I  need  not 
say,  are  a  leading  item  in  Berwick  trade,  the  greater  half 
of  its  large  annual  catch  being  secured,  I  believe,  immedi- 
ately beneath  the  town,  between  the  bridge  and  the  mouth  of 
the  river,  though  the  nets  go  some  six  miles  up  to  Norham. 
What  more  befitting  or  cleaner  or  time-honoured  industry 
could  grace  a  historic  and  bewailed  town  than  a  monopoly  in 
so  historic  a  fish  as  a  Tweed  salmon  ?  Otherwise  the  grazier 
and  the  farmer  are  its  main  support,  for  the  corn  market, 


134     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

though  of  nothing  like  its  former  importance  in  the  halcyon 
days  I  have  already  been  tempted  so  often  to  in  allusion,  is 
still  a  flourishing  one.  The  cobbled  streets  that  have  again 
and  again  run  rivers  of  blood,  now  echo  to  the  peaceful 
clatter  of  the  country  cart,  the  farmer's  gig,  the  squire's  chariot, 
and  the  more  insistant  note  of  the  ubiquitous  motor  car ; 
while  the  note  of  a  bugle  from  the  barracks  or  the  tramp  of 
a  company  of  foot  in  a  side  street  may  bring  betime  some 
suggestion  of  Berwick's  ancient  industry.  It  is  not  so  very 
long  since  the  Scottish  and  English  farmers  stood  on  different 
sides  of  the  market.  To  this  day  the  carters,  I  am  told, 
affect  separate  haunts  from  mere  ancient  habit. 

Berwick  is  of  topographical  right  most  obviously  in  Scot- 
land, but  since  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Fourth  it  has  been, 
together  with  its  small  outlying  territory,  so  militantly  in 
England,  that  I  dare  say  what  patriotism  its  people  have  to 
spare,  after  vindicating  the  glorious  independence  of  the 
ancient  Kingdom  of  Berwick-on-Tweed,  is  expended  on 
emphasizing  the  fact.  Border  towns  have  this  habit  strongly 
upon  them.  But  Berwick  is  quite  peculiarly  situated,  for  it  is 
the  market  and  shopping  centre  of  a  large  slice  of  one  of  the 
fattest  of  Scottish  counties,  as  well  as  of  north-east  Northum- 
berland. Yet  Tweed  has  been  a  very  real  and  effective 
boundary,  dividing  a  once  homogeneous  people,  or  rather 
marking  effectively  the  lines  of  a  separate  political  allegiance 
with  its  age  of  mutual  hatred,  quite  fortuitous  in  origin,  but 
fruitful  of  minor  differences  in  habit  and  custom.  Tweed  is 
a  big  river,  only  fordable  here  and  there  at  low  water,  and  till 
the  international  boundary  leaves  its  banks  some  twenty 
miles  to  the  westward,  I  believe  the  cleavage  between  the 
peasantry  of  the  two  nations  is  still  very  marked.  Any 
southerner,  again,  with  an  ear  and  an  ordinary  acquaintance 
with  northern  speech,  can  note  at  once  the  change  of  dialect 
as  he  crosses  the  Solway  from  Cumberland  into  Dumfriesshire. 
The  Northumbrian  burr  breaks  sharply  off  at  the  Tweed, 
though  the  confusion  of  tongues — if  differences  otherwise  some- 
what subtle  may  be  so  styled — prevails  I  fancy  in  Berwick 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  135 

town,  whose  people  to-day  are  at  least  as  much  Scottish  as 
English  in  extraction.  Where  race,  however,  is  really  in  no 
way  concerned,  the  whole  question  is  rather  subtle  though 
not  perhaps  the  less  interesting.  I  do  not  think  a  stranger 
of  reasonable  alertness  in  such  matters  would  be  very  quick 
to  note  such  difference  in  speech  or  intonation  between  the 
two  banks  of  the  Tweed  as  he  would  between  those  of  the 
Solway,  while  along  the  wild  frontier  through  the  Cheviots 
in  the  land  of  the  raiders,  the  thing  becomes  hopelessly  in- 
volved and  the  speech  differs  a  little  in  any  case  from  that  of 
either  Norhamshire  or  the  Merse. 

But  there  is  nothing  here,  of  course,  approaching  the 
cleavage  one  finds  along  the  Welsh  Border,  even  where  the 
lingual  line  does  not  synchronize  with  the  racial  frontier,  nor 
is  there  anything  resembling  that  strangest  thing  of  the  kind 
in  all  Britain,  if  not  in  Europe,  that  Chinese  wall,  which  parts 
the  Welsh  and  Teutonic  halves  of  the  remote  county  of  Pem- 
broke, that  have  not  had  even  a  tiff  for  five  centuries.  The 
conditions  of  the  Scottish  Border  are  purely  normal,  and  just 
what  one  would  expect  in  a  hard-headed,  practical  people. 
The  great  fact,  however,  of  their  separate  histories,  and  the 
legacies  left  by  them,  stimulate  one's  curiosity  perhaps  unduly 
in  the  small  matter  of  such  contrasts  as  there  may  still  be 
between  these  near  neighbours,  and  the  diverging  character- 
istics that  artificial  separation,  old  as  it  is,  has  implanted 
within  them.  There  is  surely  something  curious  in  a  once 
happy  family,  so  far  as  Saxon  and  early  mediaeval  com- 
munities allowed  themselves  to  be  happy,  being  rent  asunder 
by  quite  fortuitous  circumstances  and  then  hurled  at  one 
another's  throats  for  centuries  in  mortal  strife,  generation 
after  generation ;  born  and  bred  to  think  of  each  other  as 
devils  incarnate,  and  to  fling  backwards  and  forwards  in 
prose  and  verse  every  opprobious  epithet  known  to  their  rich 
and  common  vernacular. 

The  circuit  of  Berwick  walls  is  a  performance  that  no  one 
with  an  opportunity  to  make  it  should  evade.  The  town, 
however,  has  been  twice  fortified,  the  ancient  walls  of  the 


136     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

mediaeval  period,  frequently  demolished  and  rebuilt,  enclosed 
a  larger  area,  and  their  fragments  and  grass-grown  founda- 
tions are  still  conspicuous  on  the  upper  and  Scottish  side, 
some  way  beyond  the  yet  perfect  ramparts  of  Elizabeth, 
which  blend  with  them  at  some  points.  That  these  older 
works  had  been  existing  for  some  time  in  the  beginning  of 
the  thirteenth  century  is  certain,  as  we  read  of  them  being 
repaired  and  extended  to  meet  the  growth  of  their  greatly 
prospering  town.  Henry  the  Second  rebuilt  the  castle  after 
wresting  the  town  from  the  Scots,  who  had  held  it,  as  the 
chief  port  of  Scotland,  ever  since  Saxon  Northumbria  fell  in 
half  at  the  Tweed.  The  only  upstanding  survival  of  the 
older  fortifications,  which  were  two  miles  in  circumference,  is 
a  massive  pentagonal  tower  of  three  stories  looking  out 
towards  Scotland.  Here  was  swung  the  alarm  bell  which 
warned  the  citizens  of  the  approaching  foe,  and  here,  too,  on 
its  summit  blazed  the  beacon  fire  that  first  roused  the 
warriors  of  the  north-eastern  March.  The  broad  promenade 
on  the  summit  of  the  Tudor  ramparts  lifts  one  up  above  the 
town,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  green  fields  that  slope  to  the 
adjacent  sea  upon  the  other.  One  looks  down  from  them 
on  the  roofless  and  grass-grown  interior  of  casements,  guard- 
rooms, storehouses  and  apartments,  some  still  showing  the 
mouldering  fireplaces  which  warmed  the  gunners  of  Eliza- 
beth's rude  artillery.  The  foliage  of  the  densely  shaded,  wide- 
spreading  graveyard  of  the  parish  church  rustles  picturesquely 
against  the  inner  side  of  the  ramparts  at  the  top  of  the  town. 
The  ample  edifice  itself  will  hardly  attract,  as  it  was  erected 
in  the  Cromwellian  period,  and  in  that  respect  at  least  has 
the  merit  of  singularity. 

It  was  a  bright  July  noon  when  I  made  my  first  acquaint- 
ance with  this  suggestive  scene.  Peace,  sunshine,  and  solitude 
then  pervaded  it.  The  winds  for  once  were  still,  and  the  people 
of  Berwick,  as  it  was  market  day,  were  doubtless  well  occupied 
below,  for  which  fortuitous  combination  I  was  thankful.  The 
prospect  seaward  and  to  the  south  was  one  of  summer  skies 
.  and  blue  waters,  touched  here  and  there  with  the  smoke  of  a 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  -      137 

trading  steamer  or  the  sail  of  a  cobble.  The  mouth  of  the 
Tweed  and  the  narrow  channel,  guarded  by  the  lighthouse 
pier,  up  which  its  thousand  salmon  run  to  noble  or  ignoble 
ends,  or  to  return  again,  lay  below.  Beyond  it  were  the  yellow 
sands  of  Spittal,  with  its  houses  lurking  in  the  shadow  of  over- 
hanging hills,  and  in  the  further  distance,  yet  distinct  enough, 
the  pale  sandy  levels  of  Holy  Island,  with  its  uplifted  rock 
fortress,  craning  far  out  into  the  blue. 

The  citizens  of  not  many  towns  have  so  stimulating  a 
Sunday  parade  ground  as  these  grassed  and  gravelled  ram- 
parts, discreetly  provided,  moreover,  with  an  occasional  seat 
as  a  further  aid  to  reflection ;  for  the  visitor  disposed  that 
way  and  with  sufficient  historical  equipment  to  call  up  only 
a  small  part  of  that  crowded  past  in  which  Berwick  so 
prominently  figured,  will  in  all  likelihood  be  quite  thankful 
for  one  of  them  before  he  has  finished.  Some  people  derive 
Berwick  from  the  Cymro-Teutonic  compound  Aber-wick. 
This  sounds  most  reasonable,  hber  signifying  the  mouth  of  a 
river,  while  some  of  the  Saxons  whom  Ida  gathered  into  one 
kingdom  certainly  then  or  later  had  a  "  wick  "  or  town  here. 
The  Celts  would  naturally  have  emphasized  the  penultimate 
and  made  it  Aberwick,  which  is  practically  the  modern  name, 
though  some  authorities  have  it  Bere-wick,  i.e.  grain  town  or 
port  But  the  hazy  Berwick  of  Saxon  or  Danes,  owners  and 
frequent  pillagers  respectively,  pales  in  interest  before  the 
much  more  realistic  town  and  stronghold  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  had  fallen  in  Saxon  times  under  the  rule  of  Lothian  and 
in  due  course  of  Scottish  kings,  and  it  changed  hands  thirteen 
times  between  that  period  and  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  The 
year  1480  may  be  recommended  to  all  for  whom  a  date  repre- 
sents a  position  on  some  mental  table,  riot  a  confusion  of  figures 
like  one's  new  number  at  the  Army  and  Navy  Stores,  as 
the  final  inclusion  of  the  town  in  the  Kingdom  of  England, 
reserving  of  course  its  cherished  autonomy  with  all  the  dignity 
of  description  therein  implied.  William  the  Lion,  who  had 
been  a  scourge  to  Northumberland  and  was  captured  in  a 
somewhat  celebrated  skirmish  near  Alnwick,  had  surrendered 


138     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Berwick  to  Henry  the  Second  as  a  pledge  for  his  good 
behaviour  on  release.  But  the  other  Lion,  Richard  the  First, 
whose  hurried  visits  to  his  kingdom  were  mainly  occupied 
in  turning  every  available  asset  into  cash  for  his  Oriental 
adventures,  made  a  handsome  sum  out  of  the  sale  of  Berwick 
and  other  Border  places  much  more  intimately  bound  to 
England.  But  his  brother  John,  though  not  a  heroic  absentee 
but  a  very  patriotic  scoundrel,  in  so  far  as  he  had  no  love  for 
crossing  the  Channel  and  poked  his  nose  into  almost  every 
corner  of  his  realm  to  the  harassing  of  the  locals,  was  at  least 
a  clever  scoundrel  and  a  formidable  neighbour  to  the  Scots 
and  Welsh.  His  northern  barons,  by  way  of  annoying  the 
truculent  monarch,  paid  homage  to  Alexander  of  Scotland  in 
return  for  his  alliance.  It  was  a  rash  transaction,  encouraged 
perhaps  by  the  fact  that  John  had  in  a  former  year  made  a 
futile  attempt  to  recover  Berwick,  and  even  built  a  castle  at 
Tweedmouth,  which  was  destroyed  by  William  the  Lion.  This 
time,  however,  John  surged  down  on  Scotland  with  a  large 
army,  including  a  host  of  mercenaries,  and  was  more  successful. 

John's  soldiers,  with  small  expectation  perhaps  of  their 
wages,  executed  most  barbarous  cruelties  on  the  inhabitants 
in  the  process  of  extracting  the  secret  or  supposed  secret  of 
their  treasures.  One  might  give  even  John  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt  whether  these  grievous  things  were  done  with  his 
approval.  But  when  the  army  returned  to  Berwick,  the  king 
not  only  ordered  the  town  to  be  fired  but  set  fire  himself  to 
the  roof  which  had  sheltered  him,  and  the  flames  are  said  to 
have  been  fed  with  living  bodies  of  the  populace. 

Revenge  sated,  however,  John  retired,  and  nothing  was  said 
about  the  possession  of  Berwick.  Probably  there  was  not 
much  left  to  possess.  The  capital  of  south-eastern  Scotland 
inhabited,  according  to  contemporary  writers,  by  opulent 
merchants  living  in  palaces  and  owning  many  ships,  was 
now  a  smouldering  site,  with  the  gutted  castle  rising  grimly 
alongside  of  the  desolation. 

Berwick  rose  again,  however,  like  a  Phoenix  from  its 
ashes  ;  a  colony  of  Flemings  were  invited  over  by  Alexander 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  139 

the  Third,  and  their  presence  is  still  recalled  by  Woolmarket 
Street.  When  Edward  the  First  arrived,  seventy  years  later, 
on  his  memorable  Scottish  campaigns,  Berwick  was  more 
prosperous  than  ever  ;  "  a  second  Alexandria,"  says  an  enthusi- 
astic contemporary ;  whole  fleets  of  ships  laden  with  carded 
wool  cleared  from  the  narrow  mouth  of  Tweed  and  brought 
back  varied  cargoes  from  the  continent.  A  famous  church, 
dedicated  to  St.  Laurence,  of  which  the  very  site  is  now  mere 
conjecture,  sheltered  the  dust  of  Scottish  kings  and  princes, 
and  witnessed  the  marriage  splendours  of  more  than  one 
royal  bride,  while  a  new  bridge  had  been  built  in  place  of  an 
earlier  one  carried  away  by  the  abnormal  floods  of  1199. 
The  fortifications,  however,  except  those  of  the  castle,  seem 
to  have  been  neglected  in  this  period  of  prosperity  under 
Alexander  the  Third,  a  lull,  so  far  as  Berwick  was  concerned, 
before  the  great  storm  of  the  Anglo-Scottish  thirty  years' 
war  was  to  break  upon  it.  Domestic  turbulence  had  hitherto 
been  always  chronic  upon  both  sides  of  the  Border ;  Scots  and 
English  had  waged  war  against  each  other,  both  under  their 
kings  and,  locally,  under  their  chiefs,  but  it  is  generally  agreed 
that  the  hatred  and  rivalry  of  later  days  were  not  yet.  Great 
barons  held  property  in  both  countries ;  the  royal  houses 
had  frequently  intermarried  ;  even  the  Border  line  was  vague. 
The  Highlands  were  a  barbarous  back  country  owning  a  mere 
nominal  allegiance  to  the  Scottish  Crown,  and  still  a  quite 
unknown  quantity  in  politics.  The  Scotland  of  those  times 
was  mainly,  of  course,  the  south  and  east,  whose  people,  for 
the  most  part,  and  in  all  essentials  that  matter,  were  one 
people  with  the  northern  English.  Several  Scottish  monarchs 
had  willingly,  or  under  pressure,  done  homage  to  Saxon  and 
Angevin  kings.  It  was  a  somewhat  shadowy  tie,  and  a  quite 
usual  proceeding  between  adjoining  states  of  unequal  size. 
The  touchiest  princes  in  Wales  had  seen  no  indignity  in  it, 
nor  ever  raised  the  warcry  on  that  account  alone.  The 
Scottish  kings  had  so  often  held  fiefs  in  England,  that  on 
their  rendering  homage  it  might  be  open  to  after  question 
whether  it  had  been  rendered  for  these  or  for  their  kingdom, 


140     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

and  interpreted  retrospectively  according  to  the  inclination 
of  the  disputant. 

Edward  the  First,  however,  had  no  mixed  views  on  the 
subject.     When  the  young  Queen  of  Scots  died  in  1290,  in 
whose  hoped-for   marriage  with  Edward   of  Carnarvon  the 
English  king  looked  forward  to  a  union  of  the  crowns,  there 
were  many  candidates  in  the  field.     It  was  not  unnatural  that 
Edward  should  be  appointed,  or  appoint  himself,  arbitrator, 
a  duty  he  performed  with  great  care  and  ceremony  at  Norham 
and  Berwick.     Still  less  so  that  his  accepted  nominee,  John 
Balliol,  should  agree  to  formally  recognize  him  as  his  suzerain. 
Indeed,  all   the   claimants   did   this   at  Norham  before  the 
selection  was  made,  and  very  naturally.    Edward  had  recently 
completed  the  conquest  of  Wales,  and  his  mind  was  bent 
on  securing  the  union  of  the  three  countries.     In  due  course 
the  Scots  themselves  provided  the  opportunity,  for  when  the 
English  king  was  occupied  in  a  tedious  war  with  France, 
they  opened  negotiations  for  an  alliance  with  that  country, 
a  proceeding  to  be  often  repeated  in  the  next  three  centuries, 
to  the  greater  embittering  of  Anglo-Scottish  relations,  and 
to    the    further    drifting    apart    of    the    countries    through 
the  influence  of  French   customs,  but  at   this  time  a  new 
departure,  and,  I  fancy,  without   precedent.     Hitherto   the 
relationship  between  the  Crowns  had  been  generally  friendly  ; 
their  quarrels,  neither  very  frequent  nor  very  bitter.     Scot- 
land, her  chief  ingredient  being  men  of  English  race,  had 
naturally    followed    in    the    wake    of   English   civilization. 
Edward,  both  as  a  soldier  and  as  a  far-seeing  statesman, 
had  no  choice,  and  made  instant  demand  on  the  Scots  for 
securities   so   long   as    his   war  with  France  lasted ;  Balliol 
himself,  always  in  a  false  position,  had  become  a  negligible 
quantity  in  the  council  chamber.     In  short,  the  Scots  refused 
point  blank  the  castles  that  Edward  asked  for,  as  was  natural 
enough,  seeing  the  drift  of  their  intentions,  which  were  promptly 
illustrated  in  the  burning  of  English  ships  at  Berwick  and  the 
seizure  by  surprise  of  the  great  strongly  garrisoned  castle  of 
Wark-on-Tweed.     Such  trifles  as  these,  amid  long  centuries 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  HI 

filled  with  them,  would  be  quite  unworthy  of  notice  here  if  it 
were  not  that  they  incidentally  marked  the  close  of  the  old 
and  sufficiently  friendly  relations  between  the  two  kindred 
people  and  the  beginning  of  three  centuries  of  strife,  hatred, 
and  alienation.  They  also  mark  the  beginning  of  those 
devastating  campaigns  of  the  great  Edward,  which  made  him 
master  of  the  whole  of  Scotland  from  Tweed  to  Caithness. 
Wallace  was  captured  and  executed,  Bruce  and  his  then  small 
following  virtually  crushed.  The  country,  divided  for  the  time 
in  allegiance,  was  already  reconstituted  for  union  with  England 
and  Wales  when  Edward  died  in  the  very  consummation  of 
the  act.  Few  crises  in  British  history  seem  so  pregnant  of  in- 
calculable results  as  this  one,  closed  as  it  was  by  the  sudden 
snapping  of  a  single  life,  though  a  life  in  this  case,  to  be  sure, 
full  of  years.  The  humble  loiterer  on  Berwick  walls  needs  no 
apology  for  amusing  himself  with  futile  dreams  as  to  what 
might  have  been  had  Edward  lived  a  few  more  years,  for 
great  historians  admit  the  postulate  to  be  fair,  and  the 
speculation  a  worthy  one.  Wales  was  an  ancient  nation, 
homogeneous  in  every  particular,  save  for  the  domestic 
discord  then  prevalent  among  most  communities  of  spirit, 
but  doomed  politically  by  numerical  weakness  and  geography. 
What  we  call  Scotland  was  then  a  group  of  loosely  attached 
provinces  of  mixed  races,  the  English  predominant,  generally 
misgoverned,  in  some  parts  hardly  governed  at  all.  It  was 
certainly  not  the  Scotland  we  are  apt  to  think  of  that  waxed 
gradually  patriotic  in  the  more  modern  sense,  and  com- 
paratively united  after  Bannockburn.  If  Edward  had  lived 
for  a  little,  or  even  left  a  son  not  hopelessly  foolish  and 
utterly  unmartial,  she  might  have  come  into  the  union. 
Edward,  ferocious  as  he  was  in  strife,  did  not  mean  to 
bully  the  Scottish  barons,  most  of  them  of  his  own  sort, 
after  the  job  was  done,  as  he  or  his  underlings  bullied  the,  to 
them,  quite  unintelligible  outlanders  of  little  North  Wales. 
He  wished  only  to  put  them  on  a  level  with  those  of  North- 
umberland, and  to  stop  the  constant  bloodshed,  and  these 
treaties  with  continental  nations.  The  Scotsman  who  has 


142     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

had  no  leisure  to  read  history — for  I  dare  not  suggest  that 
any  other  sort  of  Scotsman  is  thus  unfurnished — will  crack 
his  heels  and  damn  my  impudence  for  this  sort  of  talk.  But 
as  I  have  said,  even  the  most  exalted  sages  have  indulged 
in  these  alluring  speculations,  for  how  could  it  be  otherwise  ? 
and  a  summer  morning  on  Berwick  ramparts  seems  an 
irresistible  stimulant  to  these  harmless  indulgences.  The 
intelligent  Scotsman,  using  the  term  in  an  academic  and 
unpractical  sense,  will  say  that  it  is  very  true,  that  this 
might  have  been  and  might  have  lasted.  Three  centuries 
of  bloodshed  and  dreadful  suffering  might  have  been  spared 
to  both  countries.  Scotland  might  have  kept  pace  in  wealth 
and  prosperity  with  England,  instead  of  remaining  a  very 
poor  country,  and  in  material  respects  a  very  backward  one, 
till  the  eighteenth  century,  to  say  nothing  of  the  demoraliza- 
tion of  Northumberland.  In  Continental  affairs,  moreover, 
the  two  nations  combined  would  have  been  proportionately 
more  regarded,  though  as  things  turned  out,  this  may  not 
have  proved  an  unmixed  blessing,  since  we  might  have 
been  tempted  to  unfortunate  foreign  adventures.  But,  says 
the  Scotsman,  how  about  the  national  pride  and  character 
that  were  developed  by  our  isolate  and  perilous  situation, 
not  to  mention  the  satisfactory  method  in  which  the  union 
was  ultimately  effected?  This  is  unanswerable,  but  does 
not  lessen  the  interest  at  any  rate,  or  answer  the  question 
of  the  Edwardian  dream.  As  regards  this  little  pilgrimage 
of  ours,  we  are  wholly  with  the  Scotsman  and  against  the 
Edwardian  scheme,  for  half  its  pleasure  would  have  vanished. 
There  would  be  no  pele  towers  and  no  castles,  nor  any 
Douglases,  nor  Percies,  nor  Bruces,  not  such  at  least  as 
fascinate  the  ages,  nor  any  moss  troopers  and  raiders ;  no 
Kerrs  and  Fenwicks,  no  Grahams  and  Armstrongs,  nor  even 
any  ballads,  but  those  of  love-sick  swains  and  most  free- 
mannered  young  women ;  no  Kinmont  Willies,  nor  Jocks 
o'  the  Syde,  nor  Parcy  Reeds,  nor  Chevy  Chases,  nor  any 
of  those  things  that  have  thrown  such  peculiar  glamour 
over  this  northern  borderland. 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  143 

Edward,  however,  was  quite  determined  to  create  a 
Britain  that  should  provide  no  such  romantic  material  as 
this,  when,  in  the  spring  1295,  he  turned  up  at  Berwick  with 
thirty  thousand  foot,  four  thousand  heavy  armed  horse,  and 
a  fleet.  The  defences  must  have  been  deplorably  neglected 
by  the  money-making  burghers,  for  while  the  ships  annoyed 
the  garrison  from  the  river,  the  English  cavalry  leaped  their 
horses  over  the  low  walls  on  the  upper  side,  and  the  town 
was  won.  If  statesman-like  in  his  aims,  the  great  king  was 
ruthless  in  his  means  of  attaining  them.  Seven  thousand 
of  the  garrison  and  the  inhabitants  are  said  to  have  been 
slaughtered  before  Edward,  seeing  a  woman  dead  with  her 
child  at  her  side,  at  last  called  a  halt.  Thirty  Flemish  mer- 
chants defended  themselves  all  day  in  a  tower,  called  the  Red 
Hall,  in  the  wool  market,  till  they  were  burned  alive  inside  it. 
"  The  mill  wheels  of  the  town,"  said  an  old  chronicler  with 
a  pretty  imagination,  "could  have  been  turned  with  the 
rivers  of  blood."  The  castle  soon  surrendered,  but  the 
blood  madness  was  over,  and  its  large  garrison  spared. 
Fresh  walls  to  the  town  were  then  commenced,  Edward,  it 
is  said,  handling  a  spade  himself,  after  which  he  executed 
his  victorious  march  through  Scotland.  Berwick  became,  in 
the  following  year,  the  scene  of  a  Parliament,  where  the 
Scottish  estates  swore  fealty  to  the  king,  who  then  returned 
south,  leaving  Warren  as  Guardian  of  Scotland.  How  Wallace 
arose  and  discomfited  Edward's  lieutenants  does  not  concern 
us,  except  that  Berwick  became  Scottish  again  for  a  time, 
till  Edward  returned  to  crush,  at  Falkirk,  this  new  leader, 
whose  right  arm  was  fixed  on  a  spear  over  Berwick  bridge. 
It  was  while  Wallace  occupied  the  town  in  his  endeavour 
to  capture  the  castle,  that  one  of  its  garrison,  a  Cumbrian, 
swam  all  the  way  to  Norham  with  letters  in  his  hair.  Nor 
is  it  necessary  to  allude  again  in  Berwick,  which  they  did 
not  greatly  concern,  to  Edward's  later  expeditions  against 
Bruce,  and  his  untimely  death  from  his  own  and  England's 
point  of  view  at  Burgh-on-Sands. 

Edward  the  Second,  in  his  futile  efforts  against  Bruce, 


144     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

dallied  here  long  with  his  "she  wolfe"  queen,  her  teeth 
riot  yet  showing.  Later  on  he  mustered  at  Berwick  the 
enormous  army  which  marched  to  the  historic  disaster  of 
Bannockburn.  After  this  Bruce  seized  Berwick,  and  treated 
it  very  well,  but  his  people  had  to  sustain  one  of  the  fiercest 
sieges  in  its  history  by  Edward  the  Second  and  an  army 
smarting  from  its  late  disaster.  It  remained,  however,  to 
the  Scots,  and  Bruce  did  a  good  deal  of  wall  and  tower 
building  after  the  truce  of  1323.  Soon  after  this  Berwick 
saw  that  marriage  between  the  son  of  Bruce  and  the  daughter 
of  Edward  which  was  to  bring  about  the  millennium.  The 
first  Edward  had  destroyed  not  merely  its  woolstaplers 
but  its  wool  trade  by  transferring  it  to  London,  and  the 
much-battered  town,  though  pre-eminent  in  matters  military, 
never  recovered  its  ancient  commercial  renown.  The  truce, 
however,  did  not  prevent  the  complete  desolating  of  North- 
umberland as  far  as  the  Tyne  by  four  thousand  Scottish 
knights  and  men-at-arms,  and  twenty  thousand  foot  soldiers 
mounted  on  hardy  ponies,  with  meal-bag  and  frying-pan, 
the  customary  and  formidable  type  of  a  Scottish  invading 
host  or  raiding  company.  Young  Edward  the  Third  pur- 
sued them  with  a  force  of  sixty  thousand  men,  but  was 
ultimately  discomfited  by  the  elements,  and  the  Scots 
escaped. 

Both  sides  being  now  somewhat  out  of  breath,  a  solemn 
treaty  of  peace  was  made  at  Northampton  in  1328,  all  claim 
to  suzerainty  over  Scotland  being  formally  abandoned.  It 
was  no  use,  however.  The  first  Edward's  scheme,  if  accom- 
plished, might  have  changed  British  history,  and  have  in- 
augurated eventually  an  era  of  love.  As  it  was,  it  left  a 
legacy  of  unprecedented  hate.  Quarrels  broke  out  on  the 
Border,  and  furthermore,  as  several  of  the  English  barons 
were  kept  out  of  their  hereditary  Scottish  estates,  guaranteed 
them  by  Bruce,  they  slipped  round  by  sea  with  a  small  force, 
landed  in  Fife,  won  a  daring  fight  against  odds,  and  planted 
Edward  Balliol,  who  was  with  them,  on  the  throne.  All  was 
now  again  confusion,  and  Edward  marched  to  Berwick, 


BER  WICK-ON-TWEED  1 45 

leaving  his  Queen  Philippa  at  Bamburgh,  which  was  unsuccess- 
fully besieged  by  Archibald  Douglas.  Berwick,  after  some 
suffering,  undertook  to  surrender  if  not  relieved  within  a 
certain  period,  delivering  hostages  for  its  good  faith.  Douglas 
with  a  large  army  was  in  his  rear,  and  the  king,  prematurely 
it  is  claimed,  demanded  the  city,  threatening  to  hang  his 
hostages,  the  two  young  Setons,  sons  of  the  deputy  governor, 
if  not  satisfied.  The  patriotism  of  their  Spartan  parents,  it  is 
said,  proved  stronger  than  even  their  affection,  or  at  least 
than  that  of  Sir  Alexander,  whose  philosophy  found  consola- 
tion in  the  fact  that  his  lady  might  bear  him  other  sons, 
but  no  such  renewal  of  lost  honour  was  possible.  So  the 
poor  young  men,  under  their  parents'  eyes,  say  the  story 
and  the  ballad,  were  launched  from  the  fatal  beam.  William, 
the  elder,  it  appears  said  nothing ;  but  Richard  before  he 
jumped  remarked  that  "  It  was  hard  to  die  for  nae  crime 
ava,  while  his  feyther  and  mither  were  looking  on,"  and 
heaped,  if  the  tale  be  accurate,  just  curses  on  Edward's 
head — 

"  He  leaped  from  off  the  bitter  tree 

And  flauchtered  in  the  wynd, 
Twa  bonnie  flowers  to  wither  thus 
And  a'  for  ae  man's  mind." 

The  shriek  of  the  bereaved  mother  on  the  walls  at  the  fatal 
moment  was  so  piercing  that  it  startled  the  very  sea-birds  on 
the  shore  into  sympathetic  cries.  Douglas,  it  is  said,  hung 
several  English  merchants  in  retaliation,  and  "  Seton's  sons  ! " 
is  said  to  have  been  a  cry  for  many  a  day  in  Scotland  when 
conscience  seemed  to  demand  excuse  for  some  sanguinary 
raid.  The  place  of  hanging,  a  knoll  near  the  southern  end  of 
the  viaduct,  is  one  of  Berwick's  sacred  spots.  Douglas,  how- 
ever, had  something  else  to  think  of  just  now,  as  he  crossed 
the  river  with  his  army  and  fought  and  lost  the  famous  battle 
of  Halidon  Hill,  a  lofty,  bare  upland  just  outside  Berwick 
and  conspicuous  from  all  points.  Edward  outgeneralled  and 
outfought ;  him  the  defeat  was  crushing  and  the  slaughter 


146     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

tremendous,  for  English  archery  had  now  arrived  at  its  per- 
fection. When  Edward  had  finished  with  Scotland,  particularly 
as  Edward  Balliol  was  subservient  to  him,  it  was  just  about 
as  his  grandfather  had  left  it.  But  Edward  the  Third  was 
not  a  great  statesman,  and  the  Scots,  from  "  the  Reidswire  to 
Orkney,"  had  in  the  mean  time  experienced  the  triumphant 
reign  of  Bruce.  Their  nationality  had  been  cemented  and  a 
robust  hatred  of  England  aroused  that  former  generations  had 
not  known.  But  we  must  come  down  without  more  ado  from 
Berwick  ramparts,  or  I  shall  be  filling  the  rest  of  this  book 
with  an  indifferent  sketch  of  Anglo-Scottish  history.  The 
next  two  centuries  had  plenty  in  store  for  Berwick,  as  the 
storm  centre  of  almost  every  international  struggle  and  Border 
broil,  and  as  a  rallying-point  if  not  always  the  headquarters 
of  those  important  functionaries  the  Wardens  of  the  March. 

I  knew,  however,  what  would  happen  if  we  sat  down  on 
one  of  those  benches,  and  if  the  Berwick  of  perhaps  its  palmy 
and  most  dramatic  period  has  produced  congestion  here,  it 
cannot  be  helped.  We  have  now  but  to  follow  our  rampart 
walk  in  its  gradual  descent  to  the  river,  and  then  turning  up- 
stream pursue  the  course  of  the  water-side  walls  along  the 
quaint  and  irregular  terraces  that  are  squeezed  in  between 
them  and  the  more  venerable  portion  of  the  lower  town,  till 
we  come  to  the  bridge.  Beyond  the  latter  is  the  old  water- 
tower  of  the  castle,  of  which  two  other  fragments  of  towers 
escaped  the  destroying  hand  of  the  railway  makers.  Of 
the  three  old  gateways,  two  remain,  one  of  them  crossing  the 
main  street;  but  not  a  trace  is  left  of  the  several  religious 
foundations  which  throve  as  such  places  always  did  where 
bloody  deeds  were  going  forward,  and  illustrious  personages 
making  offerings  to  the  Almighty  for  their  success  in  them, 
or  compounding  for  their  souls'  welfare  in  good  money. 

No  large  steamers  nor  tugs  nor  coal  barges  defile  the 
mouth  of  Tweed,  which  is  well.  A  few  small  steamers, 
trading  sloops,  and  such  like,  pass  back  and  forth  through  the 
narrow  channel  of  the  bar  beneath  the  long  curving  lighthouse 
pier,  or  lie  at  anchor  in  the  swift  tide  beneath  the  walls,  and 


BERWICK-ON-TWEED  147 

the  sleepy  sunny  house  fronts  that  blink  above  them.  The 
white  wings  of  innumerable  gulls  take  the  place  of  the  sails 
of  the  Flemish  fleets  that  spread  their  larger  canvas  to  the 
wind  in  the  days  when  Berwick  paid  a  fourth  of  the  king's 
custom,  and  who  shall  say  what  a  tribute  in  blood?  With 
the  Bruces  and  the  Edwards  in  mind  as  I  slowly  re-crossed 
the  bridge  to  the  further  shore,  the  lines  of  a  mediaeval  Welsh 
poet,  written  on  another  ancient  blood-stained  town,  at  the 
mouth  of  another  famous  salmon  river,  kept  jangling  in 
my  head — 

"  Its  green  sea  brine  thickened  the  blood  of  warriors,  and  the  waves  of  ocean 

swelled  its  tide, 
The  red-stained  seamew  screamed  with  joy  as  it  floated  upon  a  surge  of  gore." 


CHAPTER  VII 
NORHAM 

SO  leaving  Berwick  none  too  soon,  in  spite  of  its  yet  untold 
tale  of  York  and  Lancaster  heroes,  of  Queen  Margaret 
and  James  the  Fourth,  who  was  married  to  her  just  outside 
the  town  at  Lamberton,  and  whose  naked  body  was  brought 
here  after  Flodden  ;  of  the  Protector  Somerset,  of  Cromwell 
and  Charles  the  First,  and  of  the  Jacobite  insurrections,  we 
may  take  the  road  up  the  south  bank  of  Tweed,  and  make 
our  way,  with  some  foreboding  interruptions  already  troubling 
my  conscience,  to  Norham.  It  is  a  long  climb  from  Tweed- 
mouth  on  to  the  high  plateau  of  undulating  uplands,  over 
which  the  road  drives  forward  to  Coldstream,  Kelso,  and  the 
west.  Northward  of  Tweed,  Berwick  bounds  extend  for  two 
or  three  miles,  and  at  Lamberton  Toll,  on  the  Scottish 
Border,  was  a  kind  of  eastern  Gretna  Green,  where  runaway 
couples  innumerable,  were  made  happy  or  miserable  for  life 
for  a  crown  piece  and  a  gill  of  whisky.  That  James  the 
Fourth,  however,  was  not  married  to  the  daughter  of  Henry 
the  Seventh  on  such  economical  and  indecorous  terms,  will 
not  need  telling.  For  that  ceremony  at  Lamberton,  as  well 
as  its  preliminaries,  was  conducted  on  a  gorgeous  scale  be- 
fitting the  union  of  such  a  noble  pair,  and  of  such  auspicious 
omen,  though,  as  it  proved,  so  tragically  falsified.  But  on 
this  south  side  we  are  soon  out  of  the  little  kingdom,  and 
from  the  uplifted  road  there  are  fine  views  across  Tweed  and 
over  the  Merse  towards  the  Lammermuirs.  The  river  itself, 
though  but  a  mile  or  so  away,  soon  hides  its  ample  waters, 
though  the  trail  of  the  valley  is  conspicuous  enough  with  its 

148 


NORHAM  149 

curtains  of  hanging  woodland,  its  park-like  green  slopes 
surmounted  here  and  there  by  some  country  house  of  note. 
Four  miles  up  the  river  is  the  first  bridge.  The  main  road, 
however,  is  in  no  way  concerned  with  it,  but  pursues  its 
course  directly  to  Norham  on  Northumbrian  soil.  A  country 
lane  leads  down  to  it,  and  in  due  course  lands  you  on  a 
quite  imposing  chain  bridge  swung  across  the  Tweed,  where 
it  runs  through  something  of  a  gorge,  and  shows  altogether 
to  great  advantage.  I  believe  this  to  be  one  of  the  earliest 
bridges  of  the  kind  ever  contrived.  It  carries  an  inscription 
over  the  entrance  which  proclaims  it  the  creation  of  an  enter- 
prising sea  captain,  with  some  graceful  and  pertinent  remarks 
anent  the  union  of  England  and  Scotland.  The  river  sweeps 
towards  it  from  out  a  high  screen  of  hanging  woodland,  and 
speeds  away  below  into  spreading  rapids  thigh  deep,  in  which 
a  fisherman  or  two  may  always  be  seen  casting  a  trout  or 
salmon  fly,  while  moored  to  the  bank  under  the  bridge  are 
the  queer-shaped  little  cockle  boats  of  the  net  fishermen. 

Now,  I  have  no  business,  of  course,  across  this  bridge, 
seeing  the  title  of  this  book.  But  the  angler,  at  any  rate  the 
right  kind  of  angler,  will,  I  know,  understand  why  I  not  only 
crossed  it,  but  spent  a  whole  day  some  miles  upon  the  further 
side.  It  was  the  Whittadder,  the  most  captivating  of  Tweed's 
larger  tributaries  which  joins  the  latter  between  here  and 
Berwick,  that  thus  beguiled  me.  The  memories  of  an  early 
intimacy  of  no  mere  passing  kind  with  a  good  deal  of  that 
entrancing  stream,  had  filled  me  with  a  consuming  desire  to 
look  upon  its  amber  waters  once  again.  Secondly,  the  survival 
of  a  friend  and  ofttimes  companion  settled  within  easy  reach 
of  its  banks,  something  more  than  doubled,  perhaps,  the 
urgency  of  the  occasion.  I  don't  know  why  I  should  drag 
my  reader  across  the  Union  bridge,  and  over  half  a  dozen 
miles  of  pleasant  but  unnoteworthy  Merse  country  to  stand 
with  a  couple  of  middle-aged  wights  in  a  deplorably  re- 
miniscent and  even  sentimental  mood  upon  Chernside  bridge. 
But  here,  at  any  rate,  I  found  myself  with  the  clear  waters 
from  distant  Lammermuir  playing  the  old  tunes  upon  their 


150     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

rocky  bed,  while  into  them,  with  quieter  rush,  subsided  the 
Blackadder's  more  gentle  streams ;  the  two  mingling  in  a 
broad  throbbing  pool  to  hurry  off  in  company  beneath  the 
arches  of  the  bridge,  on  whose  parapets  we  leaned,  towards 
the  Tweed.  We  were  many  miles  below  our  ancient  haunts, 
to  be  sure,  but  even  this  old  bridge  carried  one  memory,  at 
any  rate,  for  both  of  us,  that  of  a  septuagenarian  sportsman, 
described  anon  by  his  contemporaries  of  that  day  as  "  six  feet 
of  copper  wire,"  standing  erect  and  slim  and  fresh  amid  a 
pack  of  exhausted  and  disappointed  otter  hounds.  Three  or 
four  sporting  farmers,  whose  enthusiasm  had  carried  them  to 
this  quite  embarrassing  aloofness  from  home,  country,  and 
friends,  and  two  or  three  young  men  who  would  have  died 
rather  than  admit  fatigue  in  the  presence  of  that  enduring 
veteran,  whose  powers  were  the  wonder  and  admiration  of 
his  neighbourhood,  which  at  that  time  was  theirs.  This  was 
in  the  far-away  days  when  not  half  a  dozen  men  in  all 
Great  Britain  kept  otter  hounds.  Among  them  was  our  old 
friend  here,  who  harried  the  otters  of  East  Lothian  and  Ber- 
wickshire with  incredible  zeal  and  sufficient  skill  and  moderate 
success.  There  were  no  eleven-o'clock  trysts,  no  hamper 
luncheons,  in  those  Spartan  times,  nor  any  traps  or  cycles 
skirmishing  on  the  flanks,  nor  any  ladies  in  evidence,  nor, 
indeed,  any  following  at  all,  as  such  things  are  now  under- 
stood. Operations  then  commenced  at  five  or  six  in  the 
morning,  and  the  sportsman  was  often,  of  necessity,  two  or 
three  hours  on  the  road  even  before  that  hour.  Just  before 
the  period  of  our  acquaintance  with  this  venerable  enthusiast 
he  used  to  keep  his  hounds  in  a  suburb  of  Edinburgh,  and, 
when  necessary,  travel  with  them  in  his  horse-van  through 
the  night,  or  the  small  hours,  turning  up  at  the  meet  quite 
early  enough  even  for  the  ardent  and  scanty  few  who  followed 
him.  Report  said  that  he  had  once  worn  a  white  tie,  but 
he  certainly  never  discussed  theology,  nor  did  I  myself  ever 
hear  him  mention  any  subject  at  all  but  hounds  and  otters 
and  mileages,  for  he  was  sparing  of  words,  wanting  all  his 
breath,  no  doubt,  for  more  serious  purposes.  He  had  a 


NORHAM  151 

pleasant  free  way  with  him  too.  The  very  afternoon,  I  re- 
member, before  the  one  which  landed  us  on  Chernside  bridge, 
we  had  journeyed  by  train  together  from  Drem  station,  in 
East  Lothian,  to  Grant's  House  in  Berwickshire,  and  the  old 
gentleman,  encountering  some  hitch  about  a  box  or  truck 
for  his  hounds,  had  introduced  the  entire  pack  without 
ceremony  into  the  nearest  third-class  carriage,  where  in 
quarters  so  unaccustomed  or  so  ill  suited  to  their  peaceful 
grouping,  and  so  provocative  of  friction,  we  spent  an  extremely 
animated  hour.  Yet  with  all  his  unflagging  exertions,  he  was 
not  very  lucky  during  those  two  years,  and  the  otters  had 
more  generally  the  better  of  him,  and  it  was,  I  think,  a  sore 
subject.  I  remember,  on  one  occasion,  how  he  shied  at  an 
ingenuous  unsophisticated  angler  from  Newcastle,  who,  from 
the  doorway  of  a  Lammermuir  fishing  inn,  inquired  in  a 
breezy  fashion  of  the  rather  grim  old  Nimrod,  after  a  blank 
morning,  whether  he  had  "caught  many  otters."  Nothing, 
indeed,  was  further  from  this  inoffensive  innocent's  thoughts 
than  an  unseemly  taunt,  for  his  mind  was  obviously  a  blank 
upon  the  subject — a  condition  quite  credible  in  those  times. 
But  it  was  not  credible  to  this  old  sportsman,  as  he  made 
very  evident. 

But  my  own  thoughts  to-day  ran  on  trout,  rather  than 
those  elusive  amphibians,  and  on  those  delightful  memories 
of  scene  and  association,  human  and  physical,  that  glorify  the 
gentle  art,  particularly  this  branch  of  it,  in  a  fashion  which 
the  layman,  possessed  of  only  a  nodding  acquaintance  with 
such  streams,  and  none  whatever  with  their  inwardness  or 
their  nature,  cannot  surely  fathom.  I  mistrust  even  the  poet 
by  the  brookside  for  the  slight  terms  he  is  on  with  it,  unless, 
indeed,  he  is  an  angler,  and  has  penetrated  its  mysteries  and 
its  thousand  moods,  and  lived  with  them.  For  myself,  I  have 
since  been  on  terms  with  many  and  many  a  stream,  such  as 
the  Whittadder,  and  on  terms  of  even  greater  intimacy  and 
equal  affection  with  some  of  them.  But  its  memory  has, 
nevertheless,  abode  with  me  through  life,  not  merely  as  one 
of  the  best,  but  as  one  of  the  most  engaging  of  them  all. 


152     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

The  light  of  youth,  no  doubt,  was  then  reflected  on  its  restless 
face,  the  waters  glowed  more  brightly  and  the  woods  were 
greener.  But  a  mountain  stream  is  always  young,  always 
joyous,  always  suggestive.  It  never  grows  old,  and  only 
hoarse  when  in  angry  mood,  and  if  you  have  been  young 
with  it,  brother  angler,  you  know,  I  am  sure,  what  it  must 
feel  like  to  return  fortuitously  after  the  passing  of  a  genera- 
tion, and  hear  its  changeless  voice  again. 

At  any  rate,  the  piping  of  the  Whittadder  under  Chernside 
bridge  carried  me  again  in  fancy  far  up  its  winding  woody 
vale  past  Edrom  to  Abbey  St.  Bathans,  and  upward  still  to 
the  wilder  scenes  of  Ellemford.  And  thence  pursuing  with 
yet  more  faithful  memory  each  curve  and  twist  for  many  a 
further  mile  of  more  perfect  solitude,  by  Cranshaws  and 
Priestlaw  by  sheep  runs  and  grouse  moors  to  where  its  infant 
streams  trickle  out  of  the  moss,  back  of  Tammerlaw.  Hence 
you  could  look  out  over  the  whole  heart  of  ancient  Scotland, 
and,  what  is  more,  see  just  beneath  you  the  woody  glen 
where  Lucy  Ashton  and  Edgar  Ravenswood  plighted  their 
troth,  and  the  village  kirk  whither  the  hapless  Bride  of 
Lammermuir  was  carried  within  so  brief  a  space  to  her 
marriage  and  to  her  grave. 

If  Scott  the  novelist  has  tempted  me  to  an  extra  line  or 
two  in  this  already  overlong  digression,  Scott  the  poet  soon 
meets  us  in  no  such  parenthetical  fashion  when  Tweed  is 
once  more  recrossed  and  our  faces  again  turned  westward. 

"Day  set  on  Norham's  castled  steep, 
And  Tweed's  fair  river,  broad  and  deep, 

And  Cheviot's  mountains  lone  : 
The  battled  towers,  the  donjon  keep, 
The  loophole  grates,  where  captives  weep, 
The  flanking  walls  that  round  it  sweep, 

In  yellow  lustre  shone. 
The  warriors  on  the  turrets  high, 
Moving  athwart  the  evening  sky, 

Seem'd  forms  of  giant  height : 
Their  armour,  as  it  caught  the  rays, 
Flash'd  back  again  the  western  blaze, 

In  lines  of  dazzling  light." 

Some  readers,  I  suspect,  in  our  degenerate  days  will  need 


NORHAM  153 

reminding  that  these  are  the  opening  lines  of  the  first  canto 
of  "  Marmion."  The  faithful,  I  am  sure,  will  spout  them,  if 
only  under  their  breath,  as  they  leave  the  peaceful  street  of 
the  long,  low-built  and  still  subjective-looking  village,  and 
ascend  the  hill  to  the  ruined  towers  of  this  greatest  of  actual 
frontier  fortresses,  rising  above  the  woods.  And  as  they  top 
the  long  slope,  and  pass  through  its  belt  of  foliage  on  to  the 
green  sward  of  the  outer  bailey,  and  see  confronting  them  the 
grim  red  sandstone  keep,  the  stirring  picture  of  the  reception 
here  of  Lord  Marmion,  the  king's  envoy  to  James  the  Fourth, 
then  mustering  his  forces  at  Edinburgh  for  the  fatal  campaign 
of  Flodden,  will  surely  come  back  to  memory  over  any  length 
of  years.  But  at  Norham  even  Scott  must  give  way  to  the 
stern  realities  of  its  crowded  past.  From  the  front  approach 
the  keep  has  an  air  of  massive  solidity,  a  huge  rectangular 
pile  to  outward  seeming  rising  to  a  height  of  eighty  or  ninety 
feet.  The  topmost  of  its  four  stories  has  virtually  crumbled 
away,  save  a  single  turret-like  fragment,  which  still  springs, 
defiant  of  time  and  storm,  a  conspicuous  feature  in  all  distant 
views  of  the  ruin.  Crossing  the  now  dry  moat,  one  passes 
through  an  archway  beneath  the  ancient  entrance,  long  bereft 
of  its  approaching  staircase,  into  two  large  basement  chambers 
of  vaulted  roof  and  sombre  aspect.  Emerging  into  the  open 
at  the  further  side,  one  realizes  that  these  are  the  only  portions 
of  the  fabric,  save  the  actual  apertures  in  the  twelve-foot 
thickness  of  its  walls,  where  there  would  be  now  even  shelter 
from  a  storm.  The  whole  front  elevation,  with  that  of  the 
west,  and  a  portion  of  the  east  still  flanking  it,  forms  from 
within  a  mere  shell,  though,  in  truth,  a  sufficiently  imposing 
one.  The  massive  Norman  arches  of  the  doors  and  windows 
make  effective  and  scarcely  less  stern  intervals  in  the  grim 
height  of  red  masonry,  while  a  few  remains  of  tower  and 
tributary  buildings  yet  hold  together  about  its  feet.  The 
moat,  which  ran  round  the  two  vulnerable  sides,  is  still  deep- 
sunk  and  well  defined ;  and  at  the  lower  end  of  the  grass 
paddock,  which  was  once  the  outer  bailey,  an  arched  gateway 
and  a  portion  of  the  curtain  wall  still  look  down  towards  the 


154     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

village  half  a  mile  away.  But  it  is  the  pose  of  the  great 
fragment  which  is  haply  left  of  Norham  that  in  the  main 
stirs  one's  fancy.  It  stands  at  the  top  of  the  corner  of  the 
enclosure,  and  near  the  angle  of  the  curtain  wall  that  still 
guards  that  quarter.  The  ground  falls  so  sharply  to  a  ravine 
on  the  east  and  to  Tweed  on  the  south  as  to  afford  both  an 
effective  defence  against  its  ancient  foes,  and  to  give  the 
mighty  fortress  a  distinction  of  site  worthy  of  its  importance 
in  the  past,  and  making  for  its  dignity  in  decay.  Young 
beech  and  other  trees  now  cling  to  the  steep,  and  wrap  it  in 
a  mantle  of  foliage.  I  was  fortunate  not  only  in  my  day, 
which  was  bright  and  still,  but  in  the  hour,  which  was  one  of 
peace  and  solitude.  For  Norham,  though  not  much  visited 
by  tourists,  is  evidently  the  resort  at  times  of  local  picnic 
parties,  under  the  watchful  eye  of  the  custodian  who  guards 
the  entry,  and  ensures  the  reverent  treatment  of  its  buildings. 
No  echo  of  unseemly  mirth,  however,  was  here  on  this 
occasion,  and  no  sound  broke  the  noontide  calm  but  that 
worthy's  cow  crunching  at  the  rich  grass  that  clothed  the 
mounds,  under  which  were  buried  heaps  of  long-fallen 
masonry,  and  the  voice  of  the  river  far  below,  which,  with 
the  recent  access  of  some  fresh  water,  was  pitched  in  a 
key  somewhat  louder  than  its  summer  wont.  After  a  long 
course  of  swift  but  silent  deeps,  the  Tweed  here  breaks  out 
at  the  foot  of  the  castle  steep  into  boisterous  mood,  and 
expands  itself  for  many  hundred  yards  in  shallow  rapids  that 
make  a  pleasant  sight  for  eyes  looking  down  from  the  castle 
between  the  tree-trunks,  as  well  as  much  soothing  music  for 
the  ears.  The  fresh  water,  too,  slight  though  it  was,  had 
brought  out  the  salmon  fishers,  and  a  couple  of  boats,  a  rod 
in  each,  and  managed  by  dexterous  boatmen,  were  working 
the  tail  of  the  broad  rapids.  I  forgot  Lord  Marmion,  I  blush 
to  say,  for  the  moment,  as  I  watched  them  from  the  river's 
brink,  whither  I  had  descended  for  such  upward  view  of  the 
castle  on  the  height  as  the  woods  might  allow.  But  a  watch- 
pot  never  boils,  nor  does  an  angler  ever  catch  a  fish,  under 
such  conditions  ;  at  least,  I  know  I  never  do.  So  I  scrambled 


NORHAM  155 

again  up  the  steep  hill,  into  which  so  many  armed  and 
vengeful  Scotsmen  must  have  stuck  their  toes  when  no  bushes 
grew  here  to  help  them  up,  and,  seated  on  the  turf  where  the 
curtain  wall  had  once  defied  all  comers,  returned  to  a  frame 
of  mind  more  appropriate  to  the  atmosphere.  It  was  a 
Bishop  of  Durham  who  early  in  the  twelfth  century  created 
Norham,  and  part  of  his  masonry  remains  to  this  day.  In 
1 1 20,  Lothian  was  permanently  withdrawn  from  the  northern 
diocese,  and  the  Prince  Bishop,  fearful  lest  his  powers  should 
be  further  curtailed,  sought  to  secure  himself  here  on  the 
banks  of  Tweed  against  any  further  aggression  from  the 
north.  But  some  forty  years  later  not  only  had  the  value 
of  Norham  been  amply  proven,  but  its  strength  had  been 
found  wanting,  having  been  twice  overcome  by  King  David 
of  Scotland.  So  Bishop  Pudsey  employed  an  architect  to 
raise  the  massive  keep  whose  remains  are  now  before  us. 
His  name,  we  are  told,  was  Richard,  and  he  carried  a  bag 
of  relics  about  with  him,  among  which  was  a  piece  of  the 
winding-sheet  of  St.  Cuthbert ;  and  one  of  his  friends  when 
in  liquor  threw  it  into  the  fire  in  ridicule,  and  was  duly 
sobered  on  finding  it  would  not  burn.  This  same  bishop, 
having  fears  possibly  that  another  greater  but  much  less 
useful  Richard — namely,  he  of  the  Lion  Heart — would  sell 
the  Earldom  of  Northumberland  to  the  Scots  for  his  crusading 
expenses,  bought  it  himself  for  ;£ii,ooo,  and  Norham  received 
fresh  importance.  In  John's  reign  the  Northumbrian  nobles 
did  pay  homage  to  Alexander  the  Second,  probably  as  a 
passing  expedient  to  spite  their  hateful  king,  which  so  puffed 
up  the  young  Scottish  monarch  that  he  spent  forty  days  in 
vain  endeavour  to  wrest  Norham  from  the  Durham  temporali- 
ties ;  the  first  occasion  apparently  that  the  relic-loving  archi- 
tect's handiwork  was  seriously  tried.  John  found  secure  and 
convenient  lodging  at  Norham  during  his  ravaging  trips  over 
the  Border,  and  stayed  here  several  times  ;  and  Edward  the 
First,  during  his  more  statesmanlike,  but  no  less  bloody, 
operations,  made  it  his  headquarters  for  some  time.  It  was 
in  Norham  church,  as  well  as  on  the  green  meadows  just 


156     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

across  the  river  from  the  castle,  that  he  declared  to  the 
candidates  for  the  Scottish  throne  and  the  assembled  nobles 
that  he  had  come  to  Scotland  in  the  capacity  of  its  supreme 
lord,  and  overawed  them  into  submitting  to  that  decision, 
which  he  delivered  afterwards  at  Berwick.  In  the  wars  of 
Bruce,  during  the  next  reign,  Norham,  under  Sir  Thomas 
Gray,  held  out  successfully  against  him  for  eighteen  almost 
continuous  months,  a  weary  period  enlivened  by  a  most 
romantic  episode,  as  related  by  Leland,  and  one  which  gives 
us  a  glimpse  of  the  exacting  demands  which  chivalry  some- 
times makes  on  its  professors.  For  at  a  great  feast  of  the 
tlite  of  Lincolnshire,  a  damsel  bore  a  helm  crested  with  gold 
to  Sir  William  Marmion,  with  a  missive  from  her  mistress, 
enjoining  him  to  go  into  the  most  dangerous  place  in  England, 
and  there  let  the  helm  "  be  seen  and  known  as  famous." 
There  was  no  question  at  that  moment,  when  Bruce  was  on 
the  warpath,  nor,  indeed,  at  almost  any  moment  for  the  next 
two  centuries,  as  to  the  quarter  in  which  a  valiant  soul  could 
most  readily  get  himself  killed,  and  Marmion  made  straight 
for  the  Tweed,  and  got  into  Norham,  where  great  deeds  had 
been  going  forward.  He  had  only  been  there  four  days  when 
a  hundred  and  sixty  cavaliers,  the  flower  of  the  Scottish 
March,  arrived  before  the  castle,  bent,  no  doubt,  on  one  of 
those  trials  of  strength  that  the  Borderers  indulged  in  as  a 
kind  of  pastime,  rather  than  any  serious  attempt  on  so  strong 
a  fortress.  Sir  Thomas  Gray,  who  was  at  dinner,  rose  at  once 
to  accept  the  challenge,  marched  his  men  out  of  the  castle, 
and  behind  him  followed  the  doughty  Marmion,  whom, 
beholding  all  clad  in  resplendent  armour,  surmounted  by 
the  helmet  with  the  golden  crest,  he  thus  addressed :  "  Sir 
Knight,  ye  be  come  hither  to  fame  your  helmet ;  mount  up 
on  your  horse,  and  ride  like  a  valiant  man  to  your  foes 
even  here  at  hand,  and  I  forsake  God  if  I  rescue  not  your 
body  dead  or  alive,  or  I  myself  will  die  for  it."  This  was 
hard  on  Marmion,  as  the  Lincolnshire  lady  could  have 
no  intention  of  sending  him  single-handed  against  several 
companies  of  horse,  seeing  that  he  was  not  yet  her  husband 


NORHAM  157 

to  be  got  rid  of.  But  Gray's  tone,  which  we  can  guess  at, 
apparently  left  him  no  choice  ;  so  spurring  his  horse  like  a 
gallant  man,  he  rode  down  on  the  Scots,  who  had  him  on 
the  ground  in  no  time,  and  were  doubtless  in  the  act  of 
selecting  a  vulnerable  spot  in  his  armour,  when  Gray  and 
his  men  were  among  them,  and  overthrew  them  utterly. 
Marmion  was  pulled  but  of  the  scrimmage  sorely  knocked 
about,  but  able  to  mount  again  and  join  in  the  chase  across 
the  Tweed,  while  the  women  of  the  village  caught  fifty 
riderless  horses,  on  which  the  footmen  mounted.  So  there 
have  been  two  resplendent  Marmions  at  Norham,  though, 
possibly,  the  Marmion  of  fact  suggested  a  name  for  the 
Marmion  of  fiction.  Norham  was  the  scene  of  another 
episode,  this  time  on  the  night  of  the  coronation  of  Edward 
the  Third  ;  for,  taking  advantage  of  the  inevitable  hilarity  of 
the  garrison  on  so  auspicious  an  occasion,  a  body  of  Scots 
attempted  a  surprise.  Sixteen  of  them  were  already  on  the 
walls  when  l3e  Maners  the  Constable,  who  had  been  privately 
warned  of  their  intention,  fell  upon  them,  and  killed  all  but 
one.  The  omen  was  considered  felicitous  to  the  luck  of  the 
young  king  in  his  Scottish  wars.  Thirty  years  afterwards 
we  find  the  faithful  Sir  Thomas  Gray  still  in  possession,  but 
at  length  drawn  out  into  an  ambush  by  the  Scots  and 
captured,  together  with  his  son,  who  was  a  chip  of  the 
old  block. 

In  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  when  scores  of  sleepy  castles  in 
the  south  that  for  generations  had  seen  nothing  more  serious 
than  a  tourney  had  to  brace  themselves  for  battle,  Norham 
experienced  a  little  variety  in  her  tale  of  strife,  and  found 
herself  formally  invested  by  two  kings,  a  Prince  of  Wales, 
and  a  queen,  namely,  James  the  Third,  Henry  the  Sixth, 
and  Margaret,  and  that  interesting  infant  whose  adventure 
with  the  Hexham  robber  has  delighted  most  of  us  in  the 
same  period  of  life.  But  they  were  all,  in  due  course,  chased 
away  by  Warwick  the  king-maker,  and  I  have  already  told 
how  the  royal  and  hapless  English  trio  were  compelled  to 
lurk  in  the  woods  for  some  days  on  an  alternative  diet  of 


158     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

bread  and  herring  till  they  contrived  to  reach  Bamburgh 
When  James  the  Fourth  espoused  the  cause  of  Perkin  War- 
beck,  the  whole  English  border  was  wasted ;  every  tower 
and  fortress  that  could  be  captured,  dismantled  ;  and  excesses 
of  bloodshed  committed,  that  seem  to  have  both  astonished 
and  disgusted  the  more  humane  pretender  himself,  who 
showed  the  courage  of  his  opinions  by  withdrawing  himself 
from  the  siege  of  Heton.  Norham,  however,  held  out,  though 
that  redoubtable  piece  of  artillery,  "  Mons  meg,"  was  brought 
against  it,  and  a  monstrous  cannon-ball  on  view,  among  many 
others  at  the  custodian's  house,  is  said  to  have  issued  from 
its  capacious  mouth.  Fifteen  years  later,  when  the  same 
spirited  king  crossed  the  Tweed,  on  the  campaign  that  ended 
so  fatally  for  him  at  Flodden,  Norham,  together  with  all  the 
neighbouring  castles,  at  length  succumbed  after  some  brief 
but  fierce  fighting.  A  tradition  tells  that  the  weak  spot  of 
the  castle  was  betrayed  by  one  of  its  inmates,  who  sent  word 
to  James  to  plant  his  guns  on  the  "  heugh,"  just  across  the 
river,  and  batter  the  north-east  corner  of  the  walls.  When 
the  place  was  won,  the  traitor  appeared  before  the  victor  to 
claim  his  guerdon,  which,  according  to  a  ballad  of  Flodden, 
was  a  rope. 

"  Therefore,  for  this  thy  traitorous  trick, 

Thou  shalt  be  tried  in  a  trice, 
Hangman,  therefore,  quo'  James,  be  quick, 
The  groom  shall  have  no  better  price." 

After  Flodden,  where  we  shall  find  ourselves  towards  the 
close  of  this  pilgrimage,  one  need  hardly  say  that  the  faith- 
ful castle  relapsed  to  its  rightful  owners,  and  throughout  all 
the  sanguinary  doings,  both  of  an  international  and  a  mere 
Border  kind,  unknown  to  readers  of  ordinary  history,  which 
distinguished  so  much  of  the  sixteenth  century,  played  a 
part,  though  not  any  longer  a  leading  one.  For  Norham 
had  done  its  work.  Few  even  of  Border  castles  have  had  so 
much  work  to  do,  and  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  and  James  the 
First  as  being  a  crown  fortress,  it  sank  gradually  into  decay — 

"  Relic  of  kings,  wreck  of  forgotten  wars, 
To  the  winds  abandoned  and  the  prying  stars." 


NORHAM  159 

The  village  of  Norham,  half  a  mile  to  the  west  on  the  river- 
level,  still  maintains,  after  the  austere  northern  fashion,  some 
appearance  of  harmony  with  its  ancient  associations.  Its  low 
one  and  two  storied  stone  houses,  after  forming  a  street  for  a 
brief  period,  spread  out  like  a  fan  to  still  face  one  another  at 
a  much  more  respectful  distance  across  a  broad  village  green, 
in  the  centre  of  which  rises  a  market  cross,  if  not  venerable 
in  itself,  mounted,  at  any  rate,  on  steps  that  are  so.  Norham 
was  always  of  importance  as  commanding  one  of  the  chief 
fords  of  the  Tweed,  and  bore  the  name  in  ancient  times  of 
Ubbanford,  or  Upper  ford,  changed  to  North-ham  (hence 
Norham),  when  it  became  the  limit  of  the  Bishopric  of 
Durham,  and  the  capital  of  its  little  temporal  domain  of 
Norhamshire.  There  is  altogether  a  good  deal  of  character  in 
the  large  and  peaceful-looking  village,  the  abode  chiefly  of 
salmon  fishers  and  agricultural  folk,  with  a  due  complement 
of  modest  tradesmen,  and  various  other  enlightened  persons 
necessary  to  a  country-side.  A  cheerful-looking  hostelry,  too, 
faces  one  across  the  broad  green,  with  a  strong  suggestion, 
on  a  nearer  acquaintance,  of  salmon  rods  and  gaffs,  of  brogues 
and  waders.  For  while  the  humble  net  fisherman  (Norham 
being  virtually  the  head  of  the  netted  water)  makes  his  home 
in  the  village,  a  different  kind  of  fisherman  altogether  will 
resort  here  for  the  purpose,  and,  no  doubt,  pay  well  for  the 
privilege  of  capturing  some  of  the  others'  aftermath.  The 
sunny-looking  inn  of  Norham  has  an  air  of  being  saturated 
with  anglers'  reminiscences,  or  what  the  more  brutally  frank 
American  calls  "fish  lies,"  as  well,  no  doubt,  as  with  the 
actual  triumphs  of  innumerable  heroes.  I  feel  sure  that  six 
inches  of  water  down  the  Tweed,  after  a  dry  spell,  will 
galvanize  Norham  into  a  frame  of  quiet  exaltation,  such  as 
nothing  else  would,  short,  of  course,  of  a  real  spate.  It  was 
another  and  more  modest  house,  however,  where  I  had  my 
bread  and  cheese,  for  I  confess  to  fighting  shy  on  such 
occasions  of  the  midday  desolation  of  an  upstair  coffee-room, 
those  gorgeous  banquet  halls  that  so  resolutely  avoid  the 
local  atmosphere,  unless,  perhaps,  for  the  fly-specked  portrait 


160     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

of  a  deceased  Lord-Lieutenant.  Members  are  they  of  one 
great  family  of  eminently  British  apartment  that  knows  no 
north,  nor  south,  nor  east,  nor  west,  where  the  long  table  is 
always  spread  as  if  for  some  impending  banquet  of  early 
Victorian  feasters,  even  to  the  blush  cast  all  over  it  by  the 
serried  ranks  of  ruddy  and  belated  claret  glasses  of  a  by- 
gone age.  Oftentimes,  too,  these  vacant  scenes  of  ever- 
expectant  revelry,  as  if  but  half  satisfied  with  the  measure  of 
their  melancholy,  reflect  themselves  again  in  pendant  mirrors  of 
gorgeous  and  tarnished  frame,  while  portraits  of  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  their  noonday  prime,  hang  patiently  upon 
the  wall,  as  if  waiting  to  harangue  the  expected  company  on 
the  Reform  bill  or  the  Irish  Church.  Nor  do  I  like  coming 
out  of  the  cheerful  sunshine,  passing  on  the  way  upstairs, 
perhaps,  some  racy  gossips  in  the  snug  parlour  behind  the 
bar,  and  taking  my  solitary  seat  at  these  ghostly  feasts,  while 
an  uninterested  waitress  wheels  away  one  file  of  pink  claret 
glasses  for  space  on  which  to  deposit  my  pint  of  ale.  Alas 
for  these  resplendent  goblets  in  this  our  day  of  temperance  or 
whisky!  A  draught  of  fourteen-shilling  Medoc,  at  three 
shillings  the  bottle,  once  a  week  would  be  more,  no  doubt,  than 
their  average  measure.  Perhaps  the  two  hundred  per  cent, 
profit,  with  which  the  British  innkeeper  successfully  intimidates 
any  possible  wine-drinkers,  is  one  cause  of  the  absent-minded 
look  of  his  table  glass-ware.  I  dare  say  there  was  nothing  of 
this  kind  at  the  Norham  hostelry,  but  there  might  have  been, 
for  it  looked  sufficiently  ambitious,  and  when  such  is  the  case, 
there  is  a  conspiracy  of  all  hands  to  drive  the  stranger  into 
its  wilderness  of  glass  and  napery  and  solitude.  So  I  sought 
a  humbler  house  of  entertainment,  where  also  were  rods  and 
creels,  waders  and  waterproofs,  in  insistent  evidence.  The 
landlord  was  discussing  the  weight  of  the  two  or  three  fish 
killed  by  Norhamites  that  morning,  and  his  guests,  one  of 
whom  was  fortifying  himself  for  an  afternoon  campaign,  dis- 
agreed about  the  amount  of  fresh  water  down,  there  being  a 
difference  of  some  three  inches  between  them,  which  admitted 
of  no  compromise.  This  is  the  right  kind  of  atmosphere  in 


NORHAM  161 

which  to  discuss  one's  bread  and  cheese,  spread  by  the  land- 
lord himself  with  much  cheerful  discourse.  The  pulse  of  the 
place  is  at  least  beating  round  you,  for  the  behaviour  of  a 
great  salmon  river  in  all  parts  of  Britain  is  of  undying  interest 
to  the  people  who  live  on  its  banks,  though  most  of  them,  of 
course,  never  themselves  throw  a  line.  It  is  a  harmless, 
worthy,  and  even  a  romantic  interest.  At  any  rate,  such 
gossip  is  much  better  company  than  Mr.  Gladstone  and  the 
late  Prince  Consort  in  gilt  frames  and  twenty  vacant  seats. 

Norham  church,  standing  by  itself  amid  a  spacious,  level 
and  densely  packed  graveyard,  is  one  of  the  finest  in  North- 
umberland. Gospatrick,  that  earl  who  so  failed  to  justify 
William  the  Conqueror's  experiment  in  Saxon  Government, 
and  helped  to  bring  his  avenging  hand  down  on  the  North, 
lies  buried  under  the  porch.  It  was  in  this  church,  too,  as 
already  mentioned,  that  the  famous  gathering  of  notables, 
and  their  several  candidates  for  the  Scottish  crown,  was 
addressed  by  Edward  the  First.  Bishop  Flambard,  the 
founder  of  the  castle,  is  thought  to  be  also  the  founder  of  the 
church,  on  a  site,  however,  long  occupied  by  a  Saxon  edifice 
deemed  worthy  to  hold  the  bones  of  the  saintly  King  Ceol- 
wulph,  to  whom  Bede  dedicated  his  history.  The  building 
has  been  much  pulled  about,  but  with  its  massive  though 
rectangular  tower  and  great  length  of  nave  and  chancel,  all 
of  one  elevation  and  under  one  low-pitched  roof,  the  air  of 
antiquity  and  importance  is  strong  upon  it.  It  is  the  chancel, 
however,  that  catches  the  approaching  eye  at  once,  with  its 
row  of  five  narrow,  round-headed  Norman  windows  and 
richly  moulded  eaves.  Its  east  end,  that  in  the  Decorated 
period  replaced  a  Norman  apse,  must,  at  the  time  of  erection, 
have  appeared  a  singularly  inharmonious  addition,  but  has 
been  mellowed  by  centuries  into  merely  an  unusually  sharp 
and  quaint  contrast  between  two  styles  ;  five  lancets,  that  is 
to  say,  culminating  in  a  single  full-sized  pointed  window  on 
both  sides.  Within,  the  arcade  of  the  nave  is  Norman,  while 
the  tower  rests  on  transitional  arches.  The  mailed  and 
cross-legged  effigy  of  an  unknown  knight  beneath  a  canopy  in 

M 


162     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

the  chancel  is  the  only  touch  of  human  interest  and  antiquity, 
while  the  oak  reredos  is  an  importation,  at  what  date  I  know 
not,  from  Durham  cathedral.  In  the  spacious  well-kept 
churchyard,  bristling  with  the  plain  austere  slabs  and  short 
obelisk  on  which  the  Border  people  like  to  inscribe  their  oft- 
recurring  names,  are  some  remains  of  Saxon  crosses  that 
have  been  unearthed  at  various  times.  Adjacent  stands  the 
Vicarage,  embowered  in  foliage,  and  approached  by  a  hand- 
some avenue  of  limes,  while  just  across  the  neighbouring  river 
the  rising  woods  of  Ladykirk  make  a  harmonious  background, 
and  contains,  moreover,  a  somewhat  notable  little  church 
with  a  stone  roof,  raised  by  James  the  Fourth,  after  a  narrow 
escape  from  drowning  in  the  treacherous  rapids  of  the  Tweed 
beneath.  Here,  too,  half  a  mile  distant,  is  the  first  stone 
bridge  above  Berwick,  which  it  is  worth  while  to  cross  into 
Scotland  and  mount  the  ridge  beyond,  if  only  for  the  noble 
prospect  down  the  Tweed,  past  Norham  village,  to  the  keep 
of  the  castle  rising  proudly  above  its  wooded  steeps  beyond. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON 

SOME  word  of  apology  seems  due  the  reader  for  taking 
him  to  the  banks  of  Tweed,  and  more  than  once  within 
such  close  view  of  the  Cheviots,  of  Wooler  and  Flodden 
Edge,  of  the  Till  valley,  and   all  that  most  beautiful  and 
historic  corner  of  Northumberland,  and  then  facing  about,  as 
in  this  chapter  we  must,  for  a  fresh  start  from  Newcastle. 
But  I  like  to  travel  these  regions  over  again  in  the  spirit, 
with  such  as  will  bear  me  company,  in  the  same  months  and 
seasons  that  I  explored  them  in  the  flesh.     It  is  true  that  I 
walked  across  the  Upper    Cheviot  into  Scotland,  one  soft 
July  day,  when  the  ferns  were  still  growing,  and  the  heather 
had  not  yet  blossomed  ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  spent  many 
autumnal,  as  well  as  July  days   upon  the  coast.     But  the 
Cheviot  that  comes  back  to  me,  in  spite  of  a  more  recent 
walk  over  it,  on  the  only  sunny  interval  of  the  past  June,  is  the 
Cheviot  of  the  preceding  autumn,  all  draped  in  golden  fern. 
The  Till  is  the  Till  of  the  grayling  rather  than  of  the  trout. 
The  grain  fields  on  the  slopes  of  Flodden  are  shorn  stubbles  in 
memory,  and  not  nodding  their  still  green  unripened  heads, 
though  I  have  seen  them  thus  in  two  successive  summers. 
The  peles  and  castles  of  this  once  troubled  corner  return  to 
me  more  often  under  grey  skies,  when  whistling  winds  are 
already  blowing  against  them  their  earlier  burden  of  withered 
leaves,  and  I  would  assuredly  have  it  so.    There  are  tempera- 
ments for  whose  content  sunshine  is   necessary  every  day, 
and  all  the  time ;  and  individuals  whose  imaginations  cannot 
work,   nor  their  fancies   play,   nor  their  pulses   beat  with 

163 


164     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

normal  vigour  under  sad  skies.  They  have  probably  been 
born  in  the  wrong  country,  that  is  all,  and  are  deserving  of 
respectful  and  genuine  sympathy.  There  are  others  who  like 
sunshine  every  day,  not  for  its  light  upon  land  or  sea,  but 
rather  because  they  can  play  about,  without  let  or  hindrance  ; 
and  for  such,  one  country  is  very  much  like  another,  pro- 
vided there  are  plenty  of  people  to  play  with,  and  it  is  not 
too  cold,  nor  too  hot,  nor  too  wet.  But  for  many  Britons  of 
sensibility,  grey  skies  and  storms,  in  the  country  at  least, 
are  an  intermittent  aesthetic  necessity.  To  the  northern 
temperament  they  appeal,  I  take  it,  with  greater  force,  and 
touch  chords,  that  in  the  impressionable  Southerner  we  must 
suppose  have  no  existence.  I  do  think,  however,  that  for 
full  enjoyment  of  Nature's  wilder,  and  more  sombre  mood, 
you  must  have  a  stage  worthy  of  it.  For  I  admit  that  the 
average  inland  landscape  of  southern  and  middle  England 
does  not  respond  in  the  same  way  to  the  gloomy,  the  wild, 
or  the  grey ;  I  think  countries  need  sunshine  much  oftener 
where  there  is  neither  mystery  nor  pathos,  nor  sounding 
waters,  nor  great  solitudes,  nor  inspiring  heights,  nor  any  of 
the  things  that  go  out  to  meet  a  gloomy  sky,  or  are  in 
sympathy  with  a  Scotch  mist. 

To  come  down,  however,  to  hard  fact,  my  movements  in 
August  were  dictated  by  circumstances  quite  unforeseen,  and 
by  no  sort  of  personal  volition.  Wooler,  which  at  a  distance, 
and  in  anticipation,  had  appeared  to  my  misguided  fancy  as 
a  modest  market-town — which,  in  truth,  was  a  sufficiently 
accurate  forecast — containing  possibly  a  few  snug  haunts  to 
which  anglers  resorted,  in  most  months  excepting  August, 
proved  in  the  reality  to  be  an  August  resort  of  the  most 
compelling  kind  for  the  ordinary  holiday  maker.  Its 
capacities,  to  be  sure,  are  not  great,  but  such  as  they  are,  I 
found  them  all  pre-empted  whole  months,  some  of  them 
even  a  year,  ahead,  and  such  holes  and  corners  as  remained 
made  me  feel  relieved  that  at  least  I  was  a  free  man,  and  not 
a  curate  or  a  bank  clerk,  ordered  into  immediate  residence 
there.  Hexham  was  the  alternative,  or  it  became  so  now  at 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON     165 

least,  though,  in  the  innocence  of  my  heart,  I  had  reserved 
that  centre  for  September.  This  mere  reversion  of  our 
programme,  however,  was  of  slight  consequence,  but  it 
became  really  serious,  when  I  had  scoured  the  bran-new 
residential  quarters  of  that  otherwise  ancient  abbey  town  for 
half  a  day  with  absolute  futility.  Compared  to  Wooler,  its 
resources  in  this  respect  are  generous,  but  Newcastle  and  its 
suburbs  had  tested  them  to  the  full.  Nor  yet  is  North- 
umberland like  the  Lake  country,  Devonshire,  or  Wales, 
where  every  other  farmhouse  makes  a  business  of  harbour- 
ing the  stranger.  The  farmers  here  are  much  too  big  for 
that  sort  of  traffic,  and  those  who  are  not,  are — well  North- 
umbrians ;  reserved  folk,  not  yet,  at  any  rate,  accustomed  to 
the  notion,  nor,  I  should  say,  well  equipped  for  the  venture. 
Nor  do  bowery  villages,  each  with  their  half-dozen  or  so, 
simple,  but  sufficient  snuggeries,  abound  as  in  these  other 
regions.  If  you  stood  on  a  hill  anywhere,  and  looked  out 
far  and  wide  over  this  Northumbrian  country,  you  might 
almost  swear  that  there  was  no  holding  in  it  of  this  kind.  A 
friendly  postmistress,  however,  at  length  proved  my  salvation. 
Some  unforeseen  accident  had  that  very  morning  deprived  an 
entirely  respectable  house  of  its  expected  tenants,  and  in  five 
minutes  I  was  inside  it,  and  clinched  a  bargain  that  neither 
I  nor  my  little  party  had  cause  to  regret. 

Hexham  lies  some  twenty  miles  west  of  Newcastle,  on 
the  Carlisle  line,  and  just  below  the  junction  of  the  North 
and  South  Tyne.  It  is  an  ideal  situation  from  which  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  a  large  slice  of  the  most  beautiful 
portion  of  the  county ;  and  yet  more  lies  adjacent  to  the 
most  complete  and  striking  section  of  the  Roman  wall,  and 
handy  to  all  of  it.  Moreover,  it  is  in  itself,  for  its  charm  of 
situation  and  venerable  associations,  a  quite  stimulating 
place  of  sojourn.  The  Carlisle  express,  too,  carries  you  there 
in  half  an  hour,  while  the  slower  trains  facilitate  your  ex- 
plorations thence  both  to  the  east  and  to  the  west.  The 
railway  from  Newcastle  follows  up  the  Tyne,  which  almost 
at  once  a  fine  brawling  river  gradually  shakes  off  station  by 


166     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

station,  those  disfiguring  signs  of  industry  that  we  here,  at 
any  rate,  are  glad  enough  to  dispense  with.  One  passes 
Ovingham,  the  birthplace  of  Bewick,  with  the  ruinous  towers 
of  Prudhoe  castle,  the  key  fortress  of  the  Tyne  in  former 
days  crowning  its  hill.  At  Corbridge,  one  of  the  pleasanter 
little  towns  of  the  county,  and  of  great  antiquity,  lying  at 
the  far  end  of  its  ancient  stone  bridge,  one  has  left  behind 
any  trace  of  collieries  worth  mentioning,  and  has  entered  the 
clean  as  well  as  the  romantic  section  of  Tynedale. 

Three  miles  beyond  is  Hexham,  showing  to  great 
advantage  from  nearly  any  point,  not  excepting  the  railway 
station,  which  in  truth  provides  a  most  effective  view  of  the 
old  episcopal  town  clustering  on  its  outstanding  hill,  with 
its  noble  Abbey,  Moot-hall,  and  Norman  keep  as  its  apex. 
The  broad  Tyne,  in  stream  as  ample,  and  even  swifter  than 
the  Tweed  at  Norham,  washes  its  base,  and  is  here  spanned 
by  a  fine  stone  bridge  of  nine  arches  which  puts  a  finishing 
touch  to  a  scene  that  is  unique  of  its  kind  in  Northumberland. 
The  hill  from  which  the  town  looks  down  upon  the  river  is, 
in  fact,  a  projecting  ledge  from  a  high  back-lying  ridge,  that 
on  the  south,  as  on  the  north  bank,  shuts  in  the  winding 
valley  of  the  Tyne.  With  a  population  of  some  seven 
thousand,  and  a  chief  interest  in  stock  and  crops,  Hexham 
is  a  clean  town  set  in  a  clean  country.  If  you  look  over 
to  it  from  the  far  side  of  the  river,  which  beneath  the 
bridge  breaks  into  a  broad  expanse  of  rapids,  in  stormy 
weather  turbulent  and  white  with  foam,  with  the  old  abbey 
standing  out  against  the  sky,  and  the  long  slope  of  roofs  and 
gables  falling  away  from  it  on  the  three  visible  sides,  it 
seems  a  place  well  worthy  of  an  ancient  fame,  and  of  dignity 
hardly  to  be  looked  for  in  a  situation  till  modern  times  so 
far  remote.  On  the  crown  of  the  hill,  and  the  centre  of  the 
old  town,  is  an  open  and  spacious  market-square,  till  recent 
years  one  of  the  most  picturesque  in  England.  The  west 
side  is  filled  by  the  abbey,  the  tower,  transept,  and  chancel 
of  which  are  still  standing  in  good  repair,  and  in  regular  use 
as  the  parish  church.  Fronting  it  on  the  west  side  of  the 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    167 

square  is  the  Moot-hall,  a  lofty  and  rectangular  Edwardian 
building,  beneath  which  runs  a  deep  gothic  archway,  sur- 
mounted at  each  end  by  towers  that  still  display  their 
warlike  character  in  corbels,  for  carrying  platforms,  in 
machicolations  and  narrow  windows.  Just  through  it  is 
another  yet  larger  tower,  known  as  the  Manor  office,  with  its 
four  centuries  of  manorial  connection  with  the  Archbishopric 
of  York.  Here,  again,  are  massive  walls  ten  feet  thick,  and 
narrow  windows,  and  more  corbels  for  siege  purposes,  when 
it  was  the  point  of  resistance,  in  those  times  of  stress  which 
were  so  frequent.  All  these  interiors  are  now  used  for  civic 
purposes,  while  adjoining  them  is  the  old  Elizabethan 
Grammar  school,  whose  picturesque  but  limited  proportions 
have  been  long  discarded  as  inadequate  to  modern  demands. 
This  heart  of  Hexham,  though  no  longer  worthy  of  the  un- 
qualified eulogies  it  solicited  from  even  mid- Victorian 
travellers,  still  survives  the  onslaughts  of  modern  Philistines 
with  some  measure  of  success.  They  cannot,  for  instance, 
build  out  the  abbey  which  dominates  the  whole  scene, 
though  the  east  wall  of  the  choir  which  fronts  the  square 
has  been  lamentably  handled  by  some  nineteenth-century 
restorers.  Nor  can  they  obliterate  the  stern  Edwardian 
towers  which  face  it.  The  long,  open  market-building  in  the 
south  corner,  too,  has  at  least  a  century  and  a  half  to  its 
credit.  In  the  matter  of  those  private  dwellings  and  shops 
which  now  look  out  from  three  sides  of  this  ancient  scene  of 
Hexham  traffic  and  turmoil,  piety  and  merry-making,  the 
vandal,  I  am  told,  has  been  exceptionally  industrious  in  the 
last  three  decades ;  that  is  to  say,  if  you  may  call  a  man 
evil  names  who  pulls  down  an  old  house,  which  perhaps  is 
tumbling  on  the  top  of  him,  and  erects  one  with  no  thought 
whatever  for  the  appearance  of  its  exterior.  There  is  no 
Duke  at  Hexham,  as  at  Alnwick,  to  curb  the  frenzy  of  the 
builder,  to  whom  reverence  for  the  past,  or  even  respect  for 
the  eyesight  of  the  present,  has  not  merely  no  meaning,  but 
is  sometimes  an  object  of  derision.  After  all,  Hexham 
market-place,  though  no  longer  among  the  best  in  England, 


168     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

retains  even  yet  great  qualities  which  its  newer  buildings,  no 
worse  than  others  of  their  kind,  cannot  wholly  destroy.  The 
streets  leading  out  of  it,  too,  are  all  on  the  cramped  lines  of  a 
day  when  such  limitations  were  a  positive  advantage  ;  for 
in  the  troublous  old  Border  times,  when  the  beacons  were 
fired,  the  stock  were  driven  into  the  centre  of  a  town,  and 
the  narrower  the  approaches  to  it,  the  more  easily  were  they 
defended.  Another  admirable  example  of  this  may  be  seen 
in  modern  Penrith.  It  was  in  this  market-place  that  the 
Duke  of  Somerset  was  executed,  the  day  after  the  second 
battle  of  Hexham,  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  and  with  him 
a  Border  thief,  whom  it  is  thought  may  have  been  the 
very  man  to  whom  Queen  Margaret,  in  the  previous  fight 
there,  had  been  so  greatly  indebted.  Here,  too,  during  the 
much  later  days  of  the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace,  throngs  of 
armed  men  passed  backwards  and  forwards,  the  ousting  of 
the  canons  of  the  abbey  with  others  in  the  neighbourhood, 
stirring  the  Borderers  and  their  chiefs  to  fury,  and  those  not 
piously  interested  to  outrage  and  plunder,  on  both  sides  of 
the  March.  As  late  as  1761  the  turbulent  spirit  of  the  dales 
ran  high  in  Hexham,  and  a  riot  arising  here,  out  of  the 
militia  ballot,  was  not  quelled  till  fifty  persons  had  been  shot 
dead  and  three  hundred  wounded  in  the  streets. 

To  the  west  of  the  abbey,  adjoining  its  precincts,  a 
pleasant  demesne  of  undulating  turf  and  ancient  elms,  known 
as  the  Seal,  traversed  by  a  brawling  stream  in  a  deep  glen, 
provides  an  agreeable  retreat  both  for  reflecting  age  and 
unemancipated  youth  with  its  attendants.  The  reader  will 
not  care  to  be  told  that,  beyond  this  again,  spreading  over  a 
high  hillside  is  a  large  residential  suburb  of  Hexham,  where 
the  visitors  who  now  resort  here  in  such  numbers  every 
August  find  domicile.  This  off-shoot,  however,  is  compara- 
tively inoffensive ;  it  in  no  way  interferes  with  the  ancient 
lines  of  the  town,  nor  is  it  in  itself  any  worse  than  other 
enterprises  of  the  kind,  and  is  better  than  some,  being  mainly 
fashioned  of  a  cheerful-looking  grey  stone.  Moreover,  the 
philosopher  who  finds  himself  there  for  a  month  or  two  may 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,   AND  DILSTON    169 

always  find  much  consolation  in  the  thought  that  he  lives 
inside,  and  not  outside,  of  a  house  for  which  he  is  not 
responsible,  and  that  if  its  windows  command  considerable 
distances  of  a  fine  country,  over  which  he  has  health  and 
strength  to  wander  at  will,  the  aesthetic  qualities  of  the 
exterior  will  concern  him  nothing.  There  is  also  a  hydro  in 
this  quarter,  a  fact  which  may  account  for  the  older  hotels  of 
Hexham  still  affecting  an  honestly  conservative  and  market- 
ordinary  air  and  habit  by  no  means  wholly  to  their  dis- 
advantage. At  the  immediate  back  of  the  old  town,  too, 
spread  sparsely  in  ample  pleasaunces  over  the  face  of  the 
long,  steep  slope  for  a  mile  or  so,  are  the  country  houses  of 
prosperous  persons  who  do  business  in  Newcastle.  On  this 
felicitous  perch,  with  grouse  moors  behind  them,  a  salmon 
river  at  their  feet,  and  burns  prattling  everywhere  within 
sound,  they  are  as  near  their  place  of  business  as  are  people 
in  Sydenham  or  Baling,  or  other  depressing  areas  of  bricks 
and  mortar,  to  the  city  of  London,  with  an  infinitely 
pleasanter  and  smoother  half-hour  of  access  to  it.  To  the 
southerner — for  we  are  all  victims  of  environment — Hexham 
may  even  yet  seem  out  of  the  way,  set  up  here  among  the 
wild  dales  of  the  north.  But  after  the  union  of  the  crowns, 
it  took  a  fancy  for  calling  itself  the  "  Heart  of  Britain  "  ;  in- 
spired, no  doubt,  by  King  James'  well-known  remark  while 
journeying  southward  to  enter  into  his  inheritance.  "There 
is  no  longer  any  Border,  this  is  now  the  centre  of  my 
kingdom."  The  men  of  Tynedale,  Redesdale,  Liddesdale, 
and  elsewhere  gave  him  good  cause,  it  is  true,  to  eat  his 
words,  and  good  reason  to  ship  as  many  as  he  could  catch 
and  put  on  board  to  his  new  plantation  in  Ulster.  But 
Hexham,  at  any  rate,  caught  at  the  idea,  and  retains  the  echo 
of  it,  which,  if  you  take  a  map  and  a  ruler,  you  will  probably 
be  surprised  to  find  is  not  so  very  wide  of  the  mark. 

St.  Wilfrid  is  the  patron  saint  and  founder  of  Hexham, 
as  the  builder  of  the  great  church  on  whose  foundations  and 
crypts  the  present  abbey  stands.  The  former  was  com- 
menced in  674,  when  Wilfrid  was  Bishop  of  York.  The 


170     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

endowment  was  provided  by  his  friend  Queen  Etheldreda, 
Egfrid's  wife,  who  supported  it  by  a  gift  of  her  dowry, 
covering  what  is  now  Hexhamshire,  a  territory  roughly 
represented  by  three  large  parishes  which  remained  on  and 
off  for  nearly  nine  centuries  a  compact  ecclesiastical  domain, 
occupied  by  abbey  tenants.  Wilfrid,  it  may  be  remembered, 
was  a  monk  of  Lindisferne,  and  at  this  time  Bishop  of  York. 
But  the  pious,  childless  queen  retired  to  a  nunnery,  and  her 
successor  in  the  king's  affections  did  not  love  Wilfrid — the 
splendour  of  his  proceedings  and  his  wealth  eclipsing  that  of 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  arousing  the  jealousy 
of  the  new  queen,  and  even  the  king  himself.  When  it  was 
proposed  to  divide  the  northern  diocese  into  those  of 
Lindisferne  and  Hexham,  Wilfrid,  who  then  held  jurisdiction 
over  the  whole  of  Britain  north  of  the  Humber,  strongly 
opposed  the  scheme,  and  announced  to  the  court  that  he 
would  appeal  against  it  at  Rome,  which  provoked  the 
assembly  to  roars  of  laughter,  so  little  was  Rome  then  heeded 
by  English  divines.  Wilfrid,  who  had  contracted  abroad 
strong  Latin  leanings,  carried  out  his  intention,  but  was  so 
long  away,  that  when  he  returned  he  found  his  church 
promoted  to  a  cathedral,  and  the  new  diocese  of  Hexham 
already  created.  He  had  in  his  pocket,  however,  a  papal 
mandate  against  this  procedure,  but  when  he  presented  it, 
the  assembly  laughed  still  louder  than  before,  and  the  king 
imprisoned  him  for  nine  months.  He  became  ultimately  the 
third  bishop  of  the  diocese  against  the  creation  of  which  he 
had  so  violently  striven,  after  having  again  held  York  for  a 
short  time,  as  well  as  Lindisferne  for  an  equally  brief  one. 
But  he  remained  Bishop  of  Hexham  a  little  longer,  striving 
constantly  against  the  pretensions  of  Canterbury  over  the 
northern  sees,  and  at  home  a  strong  advocate  of  the  Latin 
over  the  Celtic  form  of  church  ritual  and  discipline.  He  held 
at  the  same  time  the  Monastery  of  Ripon,  to  which  he  was 
deeply  attached.  On  his  last  journey  from  Rome,  during  a 
critical  illness,  the  Archangel  Michael  paid  him  a  visit, 
assuring  him  of  four  more  years  of  life  if  he  would  build 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    171 

another  church  at  Hexham.  This  he  did  at  the  south-east 
corner  of  his  earlier  one,  making  it  of  circular  form,  for  use, 
it  is  supposed,  as  baptistry  and  chapter  house,  dying  at  the 
appointed  time,  after  a  life  full  of  energy  and  strife  and 
architectural  activity.  So  much  for  St.  Wilfrid,  to  whom  is 
due  at  least  this  brief  recognition  for  the  big  place  he  still 
occupies  in  the  regard  of  Hexhamshire,  and  for  the  many 
thousand  Northumbrians,  from  his  time  to  ours,  who  have 
borne  his  mellifluous  name.  The  latter,  oddly  enough,  was 
brought  seriously  into  the  ecclesiastical  law  courts  during  the 
prosecution  of  Bishop  King  of  Lincoln,  some  twenty  years 
ago — the  authority  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury's  court 
over  Wilfrid  being  cited  as  a  precedent  for  that  exercised 
over  Dr.  King.  A  most  beautifully  wrought  manuscript  of 
the  four  gospels  executed  for  Wilfrid  by  an  unknown  hand, 
profusely  and  exquisitely  ornamented,  is  extant;  and, 
curiously  enough,  after  some  changes  of  ownership  in  this 
country,  was  purchased  by  the  German  Government,  who  are 
said  to  have  refused  five  thousand  pounds  for  it.  As  to  the 
other  twelve  bishops  who  filled  the  episcopal  throne  at 
Hexham  for  the  hundred  and  forty  years  of  its  diocesan 
existence,  their  record  would  be  superfluous  here.  It  was 
the  ravaging  Danes,  not  any  church  synod,  that  brought 
them  and  their  diocese  to  an  untimely  end,  when  the  last 
one  fled  for  his  life,  and  the  noble  church,  monastery,  and 
even  the  town  itself  were  all  laid  in  ruins. 

In  the  year  1112,  ecclesiastical  Hexham  was  refounded 
by  Thomas  Archbishop  of  York.  Whether  he  built  the 
nave  as  a  beginning,  or  found  Wilfrid's  shattered  walls 
still  standing,  and  restored  and  reroofed  them,  only  to  be 
destroyed  by  the  Scots,  is  a  matter  of  contention  between 
experts ;  at  any  rate,  there  is  no  nave  now.  It  will  be 
enough  for  us  that  the  transepts  and  choir  which  comprise 
the  present  church  were  begun  in  the  twelfth  century,  and 
carried  gradually  to  completion,  though  at  what  precise  date 
is  uncertain,  and  that  it  is  a  sublime  specimen  on  a  great 
scale  of  Early  English  work.  The  transept,  which,  in  the 


172     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

absence  of  a  nave,  forms  one  continuous  block,  is  one  hundred 
and  fifty-six  feet  long,  and  sixty-four  feet  in  height,  while 
the  absence  of  all  church  furniture  on  its  stone  floor  still 
further  sets  off  its  great  distinction.  Lofty  Gothic  arches 
rising  on  clustered  columns  support  the  tower,  which,  with 
plain  battlements  and  a  single  range  of  pointed  windows, 
looks  squat  and  massive,  only  rising  between  thirty  and 
forty  feet  above  the  roof  of  the  main  edifice.  The  south 
end  of  this  imposing  transept  is  partly  occupied  by  a  re- 
markable stone  staircase  and  gallery,  which  formerly  led 
to  the  canons'  dormitories,  this  long  time  swept  away. 
The  floor  of  this  gallery  forms  the  vaulted  roof  of  the  slype, 
by  which  the  abbey  is  entered.  The  north  end  of  the 
transept  is  filled  by  tiers  of  triple  lancets,  together  measuring 
quite  fifty  feet  in  height,  while  similar  lofty  lancets  above  a 
long  range  of  arcading  occur  on  the  west  wall.  The  aisles 
on  the  east  of  the  transept,  on  both  sides  of  the  screen  that 
shuts  off  the  choir,  are  enclosed  behind  pointed  arches  rising 
from  clustered  columns,  leaving  space  above  for  both  triforium 
and  clerestory. 

In  the  transept  are  several  ancient  monuments  collected 
from  various  parts  of  the  church,  among  them  the  only  altar 
tomb  remaining  in  the  whole  building,  a  tomb  contemporary 
with  the  transept,  and  held  by  tradition  to  be  the  grave- 
cover  of  King  Elfwald,  who  was  murdered  here  in  788. 
There  are  two  Roman  altars,  one  of  which  by  its  inscription 
proclaims  it  to  be  a  dedication  to  Apollo  by  the  prefect  of 
the  camp  of  the  Sixth  Legion,  "  the  victorious,  pious,  and 
faithful,"  and  a  few  mediaeval  effigies  and  relics.  But  by 
far  the  most  interesting  object  unearthed  from  the  foundations 
of  the  church  is  a  Roman  mortuary  slab,  nine  feet  long. 
The  verger,  who  many  years  ago  assisted  in  its  discovery, 
fairly  glowed  with  his  subject  as  he  described  to  us  the 
excitement  accompanying  the  gradual  revelation  of  this 
treasure  under  the  careful  pick  of  the  expert.  The  treasure 
is  well  worthy  of  the  good  man's  emotions,  for  it  repre- 
sents the  figure  in  bold  relief  of  a  galloping  horseman  in 


helmet,  plume,  and  torque,  with  sword  by  his  side  and 
a  standard  in  his  hand.  He  has  no  stirrups,  but  rides  on 
a  saddle-cloth,  while  the  horse,  well  bitted  and  bridled,  is 
also  plumed.  Crouching  on  the  ground  beneath  the  rider's 
stirrup,  in  a  grotesque,  reptile-like  attitude,  is  the  naked 
figure  of  a  Briton,  with  repulsive,  bearded  face  and  grasping 
a  short  sword.  Whether  this  is  merely  an  allegorical  repre- 
sentation of  the  Roman  triumph  over  Britain,  or  immediately 
suggestive  of  the  method  of  resisting  cavalry  by  stabbing 
their  horses  from  below,  common  among  the  natives,  and 
often  resorted  to  in  later  ages  by  the  Welsh,  we  may  not 
know.  But,  at  any  rate,  we  do  know  who  the  young  man 
is,  for  a  Latin  inscription  beneath  has  been  easily  deciphered, 
and  reads  in  English,  "To  the  gods,  the  shades,  Flavinius, 
a  soldier  of  the  cavalry  regiment  of  Petriana,  standard- 
bearer  of  the  troop  of  Candidus,  being  twenty-five  years  of 
age,  and  having  served  seven  years  in  the  army,  is  here 
laid."  To  my  mind,  these  brief,  lucid,  matter-of-fact  re- 
minders in  lettered  stone  of  private  individuals  of  the 
Roman  garrison  are  among  the  most  eloquent  messages 
from  the  dead  that  British  earth  gives  back  to  us.  Though 
most  remote  of  all,  they  seem  so  much  more  in  sympathy 
with  modern  conditions  than  anything  from  the  Saxon  or 
the  feudal  age,  mere  fragments  as  they  are  from  a  long  full 
epoch  of  which  we  know  practically  nothing,  yearn  as  we 
may  for  greater  light,  but  what  such  dead  stones  tell  us. 
For  Flavinius,  substitute  the  name  of  some  young  officer 
in  the  Indian  Staff  Corps,  and  the  stone  might  almost  stand 
in  a  cemetery  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges.  Compare  it, 
for  instance,  with  the  vaguely  inscribed  grave  covers  of 
clerics  of  this  very  abbey,  who  died  a  thousand  years  later, 
preserved  in  the  choir  in  times  of  which  we  know  a  great 
deal ;  or  even  with  the  oldest  Christian  monument  in  the 
church,  that  of  a  gentleman  thought  to  be  of  William 
the  Conqueror's  time,  simply  inscribed,  "Johannes  malerbe 
jacet  hie." 

The  choir,   now  used  as  the  parish  church,  is  entered 


174     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

through  a  fine  painted  wooden  rood  screen  with  loft  intact, 
of  the  Early  Tudor  period.  Among  a  great  deal  of  elabo- 
rate design,  it  carries  paintings  on  the  front  of  the  bishops  of 
Hexham,  and  of  various  other  holy  men.  The  choir  itself  is 
a  superb  piece  of  work,  though  fatally  injured  by  the  restora- 
tion of  its  east  end  some  fifty  years  ago,  when  an  east 
window  on  new  and  quite  inharmonious  lines  was  inserted, 
and  several  interesting  chapels  on  its  outer  side  swept  ruth- 
lessly away  for  the  apparently  insufficient  reason  that  they 
were  somewhat  dilapidated.  A  fifteenth-century  shrine  to  the 
Ogle  family  which  filled  a  bay  of  the  choir  arcade,  though  in 
good  preservation,  was  also  destroyed.  One  might  fancy  that 
a  pupil  of  Wyatt,  who  raged  like  one  bereft  through  so  many 
English  cathedrals  a  little  earlier,  had  been  here  at  work. 
But  the  splendid  body  of  the  choir  still  remains  as  the  old 
builders  left  it,  with  its  six  pointed  arches  surmounted  by  a 
triforium  of  Norman  arches,  and  an  exquisite  Early  English 
clerestory  above,  resembling  the  famous  one  at  Romsey 
Abbey.  Some  twenty  odd  of  nearly  forty  sedilia  were  saved 
from  the  ravaging  hand  of  the  restorer,  and  are  now  ranged 
along  the  side  walls.  Within  the  altar  rails  is  a  relic  of 
really  exceptional  interest,  namely,  the  original  fridstole,  or 
sanctuary  chair,  which  is  believed  to  have  stood  in  Wilfrid's 
Saxon  church — for  the  pious  founder  had  secured  this  right 
of  refuge  for  his  creation,  the  boundaries  extending  about  a 
mile  all  round  it.  The  limits  were  marked  by  four  columns, 
the  Hexham  one  at  first  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  Tyne, 
but  the  floods  proving  too  much  for  it,  precision  had  to  be 
sacrificed  and  it  was  placed,  so  the  chronicler  Richard  of 
Hexham  tells  us,  on  the  north  bank ;  White-cross  fields 
on  the  east,  and  Maiden-cross  on  the  west,  still  recall  the 
localities  where  two  of  the  others  stood.  The  sanctity  of 
these  boundaries  held  good  till  the  time  of  Henry  the  Seventh, 
and  with  modifications  till  that  of  James  the  First.  The  old 
stone  relic  is  thought  to  have  served  also  as  a  consecration 
chair  for  the  Hexham  bishops,  while  Camden  went  further 
and  held  that  the  kings  of  Northumbria  were  crowned  in  it. 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON     175 

Nor  must  we  forget  the  helmet  of  Sir  John  Fenwick,  who 
fell  at  Marston  Moor,  that  rests  on  a  bracket  on  the  north 
wall,  above  the  altar.  The  warrior's  skull  is  in  Newcastle 
museum,  which  does  not  seem  quite  fair  to  him.  There  is 
no  analogy,  it  is  true,  between  that  lonely  Fenwick  helmet, 
which  has  long  ceased  to  breath  defiance,  and  the  extremely 
provocative  habit  of  hanging  gloves  over  the  altars  of  Border 
churches.  Hexham  being  the  metropolis  of  so  many  of  the 
warlike  Border  families,  it  must  have  required  some  excep- 
tional nerve  to  hang  a  glove  within  its  chancel.  It  was,  per- 
haps, the  test  of  supreme  daring.  Scott,  at  any  rate,  thought 
so  when  he  penned  Rokeby. 

"  Edmund,  thy  years  were  scarcely  mine, 
When  challenging  the  clans  of  Tyne, 
To  bring  their  best  my  brand  to  prove, 
O'er  Hexham's  Altar  hung  my  glove. 
But  Tynedale  nor  in  tower  nor  town 
Held  champion  meet  to  take  it  down." 

As  a  matter  of  pure  antiquarian  and  historical  interest, 
the  crypt  of  the  old  Saxon  church,  which  burrows  beneath 
the  transept  of  this  one,  is  the  most  engaging,  and  is  held  to 
be  almost  unique  of  its  kind.  It  was  only  discovered  early  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  is  thought  to  have  been  used  for 
the  reception  and  exhibition  of  the  relics  brought  from  Rome 
by  St.  Wilfrid.  It  consists  of  a  central  chamber,  some  thirteen 
feet  by  seven  feet,  with  an  ante-chapel  and  two  passages,  one 
for  the  entrance  and  the  other  for  the  exit  of  pilgrims  to  the 
relics.  Both  chambers  have  round  barrel  roofs,  while  the 
passages  are  covered  with  large  flat  stones.  We  descended 
thither  with  the  worthy  and  zealous  veteran  before  alluded 
to,  who  appeared  to  have  taken  an  active  hand  in  all  the 
underground  work  that  had  been  going  forward.  It  is  good 
to  see  an  enthusiast  as  deputy-keeper  of  either  a  church  or  a 
castle.  Their  theories  are  often  of  the  stoutest,  their  views 
uncompromising,  and  quite  right  that  it  should  be  so,  unless 
they  are  automatons  ;  and  one  pities  the  automaton,  that 
depressing  and  depressed  wight,  set  to  rattle  the  dry  historic 


176     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

bones  of  a  place  whose  spirit  he  cannot  conceive.  The 
enthusiastic  custodian  is  often,  on  the  other  hand,  con- 
temptuous even  of  the  guide-books,  whether  justly  or  unjustly. 
How  could  a  man  who  spends  his  days  and  years  in  a  Gothic 
church  or  a  Norman  keep,  and  is,  happily  for  himself,  a 
zealot,  but  without  specific  training,  be  otherwise  than  con- 
tentious. I  remember  encountering  the  Franco-Gallic  custo- 
dian of  a  Welsh  Border  castle,  who  was  all  of  this  and  much 
more,  for  he  was  one  of  the  most  voluble  persons  I  have  ever 
met  in  my  life.  A  would-be  antiquary  from  boyhood,  his 
existence  had  been  a  long  struggle  in  baser  occupations, 
and  he  had  just  found  paradise  and  a  pound  a  week  on  the 
banks  of  the  Wye.  No  visitor,  for  some  reason,  had  entered 
his  stronghold  for  days,  and  as  I  approached  it,  he  almost 
leaped  on  me  in  his  fierce  hunger  after  such  a  period  of 
intellectual  starvation.  For  myself,  I  was  in  a  state  of  stupor 
when,  after  an  hour  and  a  half,  I  left  him  just  commencing  it 
all  over  again  with  a  newly  married  couple,  and  his  im- 
passioned tones  resounded  in  my  ears  long  after  I  had  passed 
out  of  the  castle  gates.  The  sixpenny  guide,  which  he  was 
bound  to  sell,  and  which  he  spurned  in  brave  and  quite  reck- 
less fashion  even  as  he  sold  it  (for  the  amateur  author  was 
the  owner's  relative),  lent  the  fervour  of  unsparing  criticism 
to  his  eloquence  more  power  to  it. 

Down  in  the  crypt  at  Hexham,  in  almost  uncanny  con- 
tact with  the  foundations  of  the  tower,  are  numbers  of 
Roman  stones  utilized  by  the  early  builders  and  bearing 
significant  marks,  while  over  one  door  a  portion  of  a  Roman 
altar  has  been  fashioned  into  a  lintel.  The  late  Dr.  Bruce, 
of  Roman  wall  renown,  says  the  whole  crypt  is  built  of 
Roman  stones,  for  though  Hexham  itself  has  no  definite 
traces  of  that  conquering  race,  Corbridge,  close  by,  has  very 
definite  ones  indeed.  I  do  not  think  I  have  ever  experienced 
a  stronger  thrill  than  when,  thus  buried  in  a  dark  burrow 
with  a  lantern  under  the  foundations  of  Hexham  tower,  we 
were  pointed  out  a  slab  bearing  an  elaborate  inscription  to 
the  Emperor  Severus,  who  was  in  Britain  and  died  at  York 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    177 

A.D.  211,  and  to  his  two  sons,  Marcus  Aurelius  Antonius 
and  Publius  Septimus  Geta.  But  the  effect  I  allude  to  was 
in  the  obvious  erasure  of  the  second  son's  name,  who  con- 
jointly with  his  brother  had  succeeded  Severus.  For  the 
younger  one  had  been  murdered  by  the  elder,  and  his 
name  erased  in  consequence  from  all  monuments  in  the 
Roman  Empire  by  order,  and  here  in  a  dark  crypt  beneath 
Northumbrian  soil  was  the  third  name  not  quite  obliterated, 
but  scarred  from  end  to  end  with  a  pick  or  chisel,  as  if  by 
some  minor  official  who,  in  perfunctory  fashion,  had  made 
the  round  of  mile-stones  and  other  monuments  bearing,  as 
was  the  custom,  the  name  of  the  reigning  Emperor. 

It  is  high  time,  however,  we  sought  the  upper  air,  and, 
what  is  more,  the  open  country.  I  have  spent  so  much 
time  in  the  abbey  it  is  well  there  is  no  nave,  and  though 
the  foundations  remain,  it  seems  doubtful  if  it  was  ever 
completed.  There  was  a  movement  going  forward  when  I 
was  there  to  build  one,  and  I  was  now  just  about  to  write 
"  Heaven  forbid  !  "  when  I  read  in  the  daily  paper  that  the 
first  stones  had  been  actually  laid — apparently  with  enthu- 
siasm. I  wonder  what  Freeman  would  say  ? 

It  was  on  the  perfect  morning  of  a  perfect  summer  day, 
one  of  the  few  with  which  this  August  was  destined  to  favour 
us  in  Tynedale,  that  I  set  out  for  Blanchland.  Those  who 
have  read  the  late  Sir  W.  Besant's  excellent,  if  a  trifle 
lengthy,  romance  of  "  Dorothy  Forster,"  will  need  no  telling 
why  Blanchland  claims  its  pilgrims.  It  is  not  only  for  its 
association  with  that  spirited  young  woman  and  her  luck- 
less family  at  the  time  of  the  Derwentwater  rising,  but  for 
the  quite  peculiar  architectural  attractiveness  of  church,  manor 
house,  and  village,  for  its  isolation  from  the  world,  and  its 
singular  charm  of  site.  Now  the  Tyne  leaves  the  Durham 
boundary  some  miles  east  of  Hexham,  and  becomes  wholly 
Northumbrian,  just  as  the  Tweed,  after  doing  duty  in  much 
more  emphatic  fashion  as  a  barrier  for  about  the  same  dis- 
tance, enters  Scotland.  South  of  Hexham  and  the  line  of  the 
Tyne  and  the  south  Tyne,  there  is  a  strip  of  Northumberland 


178     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

some  dozen  or  so  miles  in  width  and  about  thirty  in 
length  from  east  to  west,  a  rough  parallelogram  thrusting 
its  end  against  Cumberland  and  lying  partly  on  that  county 
but  mainly  on  Durham.  For  the  most  part  this  is  a  wild, 
broken,  and  beautiful  region  and  continues  thus,  more- 
over, long  after  it  has  crossed  the  Derwent  into  Durham, 
or  over  the  less  defined  line  into  the  Pennine  Range  of 
Cumberland.  Blanchland  Abbey,  manor-house,  and  village 
lie  on  the  sequestered  banks  of  the  Derwent,  some  eleven 
miles  south  of  Hexham.  But  they  are  eleven  perpendicular 
miles,  much  of  which,  I  believe,  those  who  travel  by  coach 
or  carriage  cover  at  a  walk.  For  my  part  I  took  a  cycle, 
as  having  in  view  a  return  route  of  another  kind,  nor  did  I 
in  the  least  grudge  leading  it  a  considerable  part  of  the 
way,  for  the  novelty  and  interest  of  the  surroundings  favoured 
a  slow  progress  up  the  long  hills  and  down  the  steep  stone- 
strewn  pitches.  The  byways  of  Northumberland  are  always 
lavish  of  wandering  stones,  even  when  the  road-bed  is  toler- 
able, and  the  Blanchland  road,  imposing  enough  on  the 
map,  is  very  much  of  a  byway.  It  climbs  the  long  ridge 
at  the  back  of  Hexham,  affording  in  its  upward  course 
the  very  choicest  of  all  prospects  of  the  town,  sloping  up 
at  an  apparently  steeper  angle  than  from  any  other  point 
to  its  great  dominating  church  and  group  of  Norman  towers. 
All  of  these  from  this  same  ledge  stand  out  with  peculiar 
nobility  against  the  green  vale  of  Tyne  far  spread  below 
them  to  the  east  and  to  the  west.  At  the  back  of  the 
ridge  the  stony  road,  after  a  long  descent,  plunges  down 
with  scant  ceremony  on  to  an  early  sixteenth-century  bridge 
under  whose  mossy  arch,  flung  across  a  chasm,  the  streams 
of  the  Devilswater  tumble  with  much  commotion  towards 
the  woods  of  Dilston.  This  is  Linnels  Bridge,  a  secluded 
and  romantic  spot,  though  only  two  miles  from  the  "  Heart 
of  England,"  whose  summer  visitors  apparently  regard  it 
as  the  limit  of  their  pedestrian  adventures.  But,  secluded 
as  it  is  at  most  times,  the  haunt  of  the  kingfisher  and  the 
water  ouzel,  the  lair  of  the  mountain  trout  who  abound  in 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON     179 

its  turbulent  amber  waters,  it  has  seen  the  history  of  more 
than  one  century  in  the  making.  For  here  in  1463,  about 
a  mile  above  the  bridge,  on  almost  the  only  level  space  on 
the  whole  course  of  this  deep  burrowing  stream,  Queen 
Margaret,  with  a  force  of  Scots  and  French,  fought  the 
battle  known  as  Hexham  Levels.  The  Yorkists,  who  were 
encamped  here,  not  only  repulsed  the  attack,  but  utterly 
routed  the  Queen's  force.  Then  occurred  the  familiar  incident 
of  the  capture  of  this  courageous  lady.  But  while  her  captors 
were  squabbling  over  her  jewels  and  booty,  she  escaped  or 
was  carried  with  her  little  son  into  the  wooded  defile  close 
at  hand,  through  which  the  Dipton  burn,  at  this  day  as  at 
that,  comes  sparkling  down  through  a  maze  of  winding 
woods.  A  cave  is  still  shown,  though  now  almost  closed 
up,  where  the  royal  lady  was  harboured  by  the  rude 
outlaw  on  whose  protection  she  threw  herself. 

But  Dipton,  or  Deepdene,  is  beautiful  enough  without  the 
cave  in  its  old  bearded  larch  trees  on  the  slopes,  springing 
from  above  a  world  of  undergrowth,  and  its  little  open  glades 
shaded  by  stalwart  beech  and  sycamores,  on  to  which  the  brook 
comes  breaking  out  from  its  leafy  cover.  There  it  was  that 
the  menacing  robber  was  hypnotized  by  the  frank  declaration 
of  the  courageous  Queen,  and  converted  to  a  friend  with  the 
sequel  which  we  all  know.  The  French  chronicler — who  is,  I 
believe,  the  only  authority  for  the  story — says  nothing  about 
a  cave  or  any  sojourn  in  the  dene,  but  that  the  outlaw  took 
his  royal  charges  from  the  battle-field  in  the  direction  of 
Scotland  as  fast  as  possible.  It  was  here,  too,  a  year 
later,  where  this  very  bridge  was  afterwards  built,  that 
Montague  with  four  thousand  men  attacked  the  Lancastrians 
from  Hexham,  who  were  endeavouring  to  defend  its  pre- 
decessor. It  was  then  Sir  Ralph  Gray  ran  away  and  left 
Somerset  to  defend  the  hill  we  have  just  descended  with  but 
five  hundred  men,  which  he  failed  to  do,  and  was  caught, 
and,  as  we  know,  was  executed  in  Hexham  market-place. 
But  this  was  not  all ;  for  in  the  rising  of  the  'fifteen  some  of 
its  earliest  whispers  were  heard  about  this  streamlet's  banks. 


180     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Men  went  and  came  along  them  stealthily,  leaving  notes  for 
one  another  in  hollow  trees.  And  this  was  natural  enough, 
for  Lord  Derwentwater's  seat  of  Dilston  is  but  three  miles 
down  the  burn ;  miles,  too,  as  enchanting  as  high  enclosing 
steeps  clad  with  verdure  and  furrowed  by  a  sparkling  torrent 
can  make  them,  while  Blanchland  of  the  Forster's,  as  we 
know,  lay  just  over  the  moors.  For  if  Dipton  Dene  is  beauti- 
ful so  is  the  Devil's  Water,  indeed  more  so  in  a  sense,  for  there 
is  more  of  it,  and  as  a  brown  moorland-bred  stream  pursuing 
a  rocky  channel  through  continuous  woodland  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  of  all  Nature's  creations,  one  cannot  have  within 
obvious  limits  too  much  of  it.  There  is  a  pious  sentiment,  just 
legible,  inscribed  on  the  centre  of  Linnels  bridge,  which  reads, 
"  God  preserve  Wilfrid  Erengton  who  built  this  bridge,"  with 
the  date  1530. 

Crossing  it  our  way  southwardly  over  boney  roads  and  a 
solitary,  though  not  as  yet  quite  moorland  country.  Groves 
of  larch  at  intervals  screened  the  path,  and  breathed  morn- 
ful  sighs  in  the  fresh  summer  wind  which  chased  fleecy 
clouds  across  a  blue  and  kindly  sky,  and  drove  shadows  with 
faint  and  hurrying  tread  over  sunny  pastures  and  hay-fields, 
only  in  this  late  country  just  gathered  into  pikes.  A  few 
lingering  bluebells  still  bloomed  in  these  thin  plantations, 
the  wild  broom  flowered  and  hollies  bristled  on  the  road's 
ragged  edges,  and  even  the  foxglove,  that  haunter  of  Wales, 
but  so  much  less  in  evidence  in  the  north,  was  wasting  its 
favours  on  this  desert  air.  We  have  no  longer  here  the  big 
farmers  of  East  Northumberland,  and  no  great  homesteads 
dominate  these  somewhat  lonely  uplands.  Indeed,  till  I 
reached  Slaley,  a  stern  grey-looking  village  crowning  a  bare 
ridge,  there  was  not  anywhere  much  evidence  of  humanity. 

No  passing  stranger  would  give  a  thought  to  Slaley ;  a 
stoney,  austere  village  looking  back  over  hilltops  innumer- 
able, among  which  Hexham  and  the  Tyne  valley  lay  entirely 
smothered,  and  facing  southward  over  a  treeless  valley  on  to 
the  grouse  moors  known  as  Blanchland  Common,  where  I 
could  see  the  white  trail  of  my  future  road  laboriously 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    181 

climbing.  But  Slaley  has  been  a  place  abounding  in 
qualities  that  make  for  a  racy  past,  though  you  might  not 
think  it  Not  exactly  the  past  beloved  of  antiquaries, 
nor  of  historian,  but  one  of  deep-chested,  simple,  sporting, 
song-singing,  strong-headed,  and  stout-stomacked  folk  of  the 
John  Peel  type.  A  friend  of  mine  not  only  knew  the  Slaley 
of  those  days  well,  but  possesses  various  clippings  from  local 
newspapers  of  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago,  which  reveals  this 
now  lonely  wind-swept  village  as  a  centre  of  much  outdoor 
and  sporting  hilarity.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  headquarters  of  a 
trencher-fed  pack  of  foxhounds  and  their  followers,  an 
unconventional  company  whose  members  wrote  and  rhymed 
about  one  another  and  their  doings,  as  well  as  rode  enormous 
runs,  though  not,  perhaps,  very  fast  ones.  We  are  here  on 
the  edge  of  wilder  Durham,  and  that  Mr.  Surtees  was  very 
much  of  that  county  needs  no  reminder.  When  I  have 
further  said  that  the  apocryphal  but  immortal  Pigg  of 
Jorrocks,  whose  sayings,  like  his  master's,  are  deservedly 
classic  utterances,  is  supposed  to  have  had  his  origin  in  a 
Slaley  sportsman,  this  is  surely  fame  enough.  A  note  of  its 
former  quality  may  possibly  linger  in  a  rhyme  I  noticed  over 
the  door  of  its  single  house  of  entertainment,  beginning — 

"  If  you  go  by  and  thirsty  be, 
The  fault's  on  you  and  not  on  me." 

It  is  six  miles  hence  to  Blanchland,  and  the  road  soon 
climbs  out  of  the  great  bare  enclosures  on  to  open  grouse 
moors,  where  the  heather  was  by  now  in  bloom  and  this 
whole  uplifted  tableland  lit  with  its  purple  fires.  An 
occasional  grouse,  who  would  really  have  something  to  fly  for 
in  a  few  days,  some  nervous  old  cock  belike,  sprang  now 
and  again  before  my  guileless  tread,  lifting  others  here  and 
there  in  his  course,  who,  but  for  his  fussy  and  noisy  warning, 
would  have  remained  snug  enough.  Not  a  soul  was  stirring 
to-day  on  road  or  heath,  over  these  miles  of  high  moorland, 
nor  was  there  any  sound,  but  that  of  the  constantly  sus- 
picious grouse,  I  listened  for  a  curlew,  or  a  whaup  as  they 


182     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

have  it  in  these  parts,  but  heard  none,  though  it  was  full 
early  yet  for  their  flight  to  the  sea-coast ;  and  looked  also 
for  a  chance  scud  of  golden  plover.  But  there  was  nothing 
with  wings  to  be  seen,  but  the  little  wheatear,  springing  in 
short  flights  by  the  roadside ;  and  the  unfailing  titlark,  that 
commonplace-looking  little  fellow,  fit  companion  rather  in 
outward  seeming  for  the  sparrows  in  the  stackyard,  but  in 
truth  of  a  singularly  romantic  turn  of  mind.  No  altitude 
daunts  him,  no  wilderness  dismays  or  even  depresses  him, 
you  may  have  passed  far  above  the  haunt  of  all  songsters, 
and  be  on  the  look-out  for  kites  and  falcons,  but  the  titlark 
will  almost  certainly  be  jerking  composedly  along  at  your 
side,  as  if  he  owned  the  waste. 

Away  to  the  south  and  south-west,  just  across  the  deep 
vale  of  the  Derwent,  rose  those  further  solitudes  which  almost 
alone  redeem  the  county  of  Durham  from  the  disfigurement 
of  the  despoiler.  I  had  rambled  a  little  in  early  life  about 
the  upper  waters  of  the  Tees  and  Wear,  and  to-day  I  could 
mark  over  a  vista  of  nearer  wastes  the  brooding  shoulders  of 
Stanhope  Moor  and  Chapel  Fell,  and  other  brown  and  misty 
giants,  whose  names  I  had  long  forgotten,  that  feed  the  streams 
of  either  the  Yorkshire  or  the  Durham  river.  The  last  pitch 
of  the  descent  to  Blanchland  and  to  the  Derwent  valley  is 
prodigiously  abrupt,  but  the  prospect  of  the  old  abbey  and 
its  compact  dependent  village  nestling  at  its  foot,  with  the 
river  sparkling  close  at  hand  through  narrow  meadows  of 
brilliant  verdure,  and  the  moors  rising  again  abrupt  and  bold 
beyond  them,  made  a  lasting  impression  on  my  mind.  Its 
aloofness  too,  as  actual  as  apparent,  from  the  outer  world, 
added  a  further  charm.  I  have  never  seen  anything  quite 
like  this  village.  It  fills  the  narrow  strip  between  the  base  of 
the  hills  and  the  Derwent,  and  in  formation,  as  the  author 
of  "Dorothy  Forster"  remarks,  is  suggestive  of  a  decayed 
college.  For  you  enter  through  an  old  fortified  gate-tower 
into  a  spacious  parallelogram  of  low-pitched  dwellings, 
with  the  manor-house  in  one  corner.  There  was  doubtless 
a  corresponding  gate-tower  at  the  south  entrance  of  the 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,   AND  DILSTON    183 

square,  where  the  road  now  runs  out  of  it  on  to  a  high 
stone  bridge  over  the  Derwent.  From  this  latter  point,  the 
wide  sunny  square  of  grey  and  brown  stone  cottages,  many 
of  them  very  old  and  roofed  with  weatherbeaten  flagstones, 
the  battlemented  gateway  at  the  entrance,  the  squat  massive 
tower  of  the  abbey  church  at  the  side,  with  the  wood  rising 
straight  up  behind  and  the  high  moors  overtopping  all,  offered 
a  delightful  picture.  So  ancient  a  village,  still  standing  as 
it  does  to-day  in  its  original  attitude  of  defence,  beside  its 
old  monastic  building,  in  the  heart  of  silent  hills,  has  no 
equivalent  within  my  memory.  The  Derwent,  too,  is  a  fine 
rocky  stream,  rushing  impetuously  under  its  stone  bridge,  as 
venerable  as  the  village,  and  glittering  down  its  green 
meadowy  trough  between  the  overhanging  moors. 

When  the  colony  of  Norbertian  Canons  from  the  Abbey 
of  Blanchland  in  Normandy  settled  here,  in  the  time  of 
Henry  the  Secondhand  called  the  new  foundation  after  the 
old  one,  William  the  Lion  of  Scotland  was  claiming  North- 
umberland, and  had  a  recognized  suzerainty  over  upper 
Tynedale.  "  The  province  was  then  renowned,"  says  an  old 
chronicler ;  "  there  was  no  country  so  well  provided  with  the 
necessaries  of  life,  nor  inhabited  by  a  race  more  universally 
respected."  The  vicissitudes  of  Northumberland  were 
violent  indeed.  For  only  a  hundred  years  previously  it  had 
been  swept  bare  of  every  living  thing  by  William  the 
Conqueror,  a  fact  that  confronts  one  most  uncomfortably  in 
all  ethnological  estimates  in  connection  with  it.  The  Nevilles 
seem  to  have  endowed  these  Norbertians  liberally,  and  its 
abbot  was  summoned  to  one  of  the  first  Edward's  parlia- 
ments. Little  is  known  of  their  early  history,  but  tradition 
has  it  that  an  army  of  Scots  were  returning  in  the  same  reign 
from  a  raid  into  Durham,  and  in  misty  weather  lost  their  way 
upon  the  moors  above,  at  a  place  called  "  Dead  Friar's  Hill," 
when  by  an  evil  mischance  they  caught  the  sound  of  bells  in 
the  valley  beneath,  and  descending  like  vultures  on  this  un- 
suspecting snuggery,  sacked  and  burned  it. 

Froissart  describes  the  coming  here  of  Edward  the  Third 


184     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

soon  afterwards  in  quest  of  that  Scottish  force  of  24,000  men 
under  Douglas  which  we  alluded  to  on  Berwick  walls  as 
ravaging  this  part  of  the  country.  They  were  encamped  at 
Stanhope,  and  Edward,  with  nearly  thrice  their  number, 
was  wandering  miserable  and  helpless  among  these  dreary 
mountains,  and  scouring  Hexhamshire  for  food  for  his 
starving  and  soaking  men.  "The  banner-bearers  hastened 
over  heaths,  mountains,  valleys,  rocks,  and  many  dangerous 
places  without  meeting  with  any  level  country."  Frequent 
alarms  of  an  attacking  enemy  were  caused  by  the  stags 
which,  frightened  and  confused  by  the  great  host  invading 
their  solitude,  "ran  distractedly  in  whole  herds  among  the 
troops."  Eventually  they  arrived  at  the  Derwent,  "near  a 
monastery  of  white  monks  which  had  been  burnt,  called  in 
King  Arthur's  time  (sic)  Blanchland."  Here  the  King 
turned  out  his  horses  to  feed,  and  was  received  by  the  abbot, 
who  led  him  to  the  church,  and  confessed  him,  after  which 
Edward  ordered  masses  to  be  said.  After  the  Dissolution 
the  place  fell  into  ruin,  but  was  part  of  that  Forster  estate 
which,  with  Bamburgh,  went  to  Lord  Crewe,  and  afterwards 
to  the  trustees  of  his  will,  who  restored  the  church,  then  in 
ruins,  and  preserved  the  manor  house,  now  a  large  inn  of 
much  deserved  repute  for  the  antiquity  of  its  chambers  and 
passages,  and  the  interest  of  its  associations.  The  abbey 
church  of  to-day  is  calculated  to  inspire  the  stranger  with  as 
much  perplexity  as  interest.  The  fine  old  fortress-looking 
tower  stands  at  the  north  end  of  what  is  apparently  the  main 
body  of  the  building,  but  is  in  fact  a  large  north  transept, 
from  the  southern  end  of  which  the  choir  extends  eastward  at 
right  angles.  This  last,  I  was  told,  had  recently  been  re- 
built, and  an  aisle  had  been  obviously  added  to  the  large 
transept.  The  church  was  locked,  of  course,  with  about  as 
much  reason  as  that  on  Holy  Island,  nor  could  I  get  tidings 
of  the  key.  Some  friends  who  were  here  a  week  or  two  later, 
and  made  more  serious  endeavours  to  track  it,  returned 
baffled.  For  myself  I  made  no  such  endeavour.  The  im- 
pressiveness  of  the  old  tower,  that  had  no  doubt  repelled 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    185 

many  a  Border  foray,  and  the  eccentric  pose  of  the  rest  of 
the  fabric  seemed  sufficient.  The  interior,  from  what  I 
gathered  in  a  local  handbook,  was  one  of  those  more  suited 
to  an  interesting  paper  by  the  diocesan  architect  in  a  strictly 
local  or  strictly  technical  publication  ;  speculations,  that  is  to 
say,  on  the  site  of  earlier  buildings,  together  with  a  purely 
craftsman  interest  in  the  various  restorations  and  additions. 

In  spite  of  the  report  of  a  fine  tower  arch,  and  an  interest- 
ing slab  or  two,  I  abandoned  the  interior  of  Blanchland  to 
those   more   directly  interested  in  mason's    marks,  and   the 
piecing  together  of  old  work   and  new,  in  groping  for  the 
unfathomable  motives  of  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  century 
restorers,  and  other  technicalities  of  a  like  nature.    The  whole 
locality   was   so   engaging,  so   peaceful,  and  so    steeped   in 
sunshine,  that  there  seemed  no  sufficient  occasion  to  ruffle 
one's   temper  by  a  key  hunt.     On  turning  into  the   Crewe 
Arms,  however,  not  merely  for  its  reputed  aesthetic  qualities 
and  inspiring  atmosphere,  but  with  the   mundane   purpose 
of  refreshment,  there  issued  sounds  of  revelry  of  which  no 
suspicion   had   escaped   into   the  outer  air,   not   indeed   of 
speech  or  song,  but  of  that  steady  clamour  of  knife  and  fork 
created  by  twenty  or  thirty  British  burghers,  who  have  driven 
a  dozen  or  fifteen  miles  to  dine  in  one  of  Nature's  sanctuaries. 
The  narrow  passages  reeked  of  smoking  joints,  and  swere  in 
the  possession  of  heated  and  distracted  domestics,  bearing 
more  burdens  to   a  feast  worthy   of  the  most  sumptuous 
abbot  who    ever  waxed   fat  in   these   monastic  halls.      It 
proved  to  be  a  club  dinner,  and  such  an  aggressive  one  that, 
not  being  a  member,  I  felt  almost  a  guilty  intruder,  and  stole 
thankfully  into  a  low  picturesque  coffee-room,  with  a  broad 
window  commanding  a  pleasant  lawn  which  abutted  on  the 
abbey  church.     Here  were  planted  a   gentleman  and  lady, 
also  not  of  the  chosen  band,  but  at  the  same  time  not  appar- 
ently of  the  kind  to  slight  their  lunch,  though  obviously  of 
the   opinion  that   they  had   themselves   been   slighted.      In 
time,  however,  the  clash  of  steel  upstairs  grew  fainter,  and  in 
the  lull  the  first  note  of  the  post-prandial  orator  was  heralded 


186     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

by  the  rapping  of  knife  handles.  Then  at  last  an  exhausted 
maiden  confronted  my  choleric  and  hungry  neighbours,  whose 
heated  remarks  left  me  on  my  part  really  nothing  to  add,  had 
I  felt  ever  so  aggrieved. 

The  monks'  refectory  is  enclosed  in  this  later  manor 
house,  which  now  does  such  picturesque  duty  as  the  Crewe 
Arms.  When  the  club  had  descended  to  take  the  air,  and 
flavour  it  at  the  same  time  with  much  tobacco  smoke,  I  was 
shown  the  house,  which  contains  many  quaint  passages  and 
rooms,  among  the  latter  a  fine  banqueting-hall.  Here,  too, 
the  British  tourist's  demand  for  a  pivotal  object  in  a  romantic 
atmosphere  has  been  judiciously  met.  For  Dorothy  Forster's 
chamber  is  diligently  pointed  out,  and  a  little  later  I  saw 
the  whole  club  happy  and  red-faced  regarding  its  window 
with  wrapt  attention  through  the  smoke  of  their  cigars. 
Besant,  in  his  novel,  makes  this  house  the  residence  of 
Thomas  Forster  during  the  intrigues  preceding  the  rising, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  had  good  grounds  for  so  doing. 
Blanchland  had  been  Forster  property  till  the  purchase  of 
their  estates  by  Lord  Crewe,  then  their  relative  by  marriage, 
who  without  any  heirs  himself  would  doubtless  have  left  it 
all  back  to  them,  but  for  their  unfortunate  escapade.  Here, 
at  any  rate,  young  Forster  is  depicted  as  living  by  the  grace 
of  his  aunt  and  her  episcopal  husband,  looking  after  the 
estate,  hunting  its  game,  and  practising  that  economy  which 
had  not  hitherto  been  a  family  virtue.  Here,  too,  the  good- 
natured,  countrified,  not  very  sharp-witted  young  man  is 
gradually  drawn  into  the  toils  by  shrewd  adventurers  and 
misguided  enthusiasts,  the  fact  of  his  being  a  Forster  and  a 
Protestant  giving  him  a  value  far  above  his  merits ;  and 
hither  came  betimes  the  high-minded,  and  but  half-willing, 
figure-head  of  the  conspiracy,  Lord  Derwentwater,  riding 
over  from  Dilston,  near  Hexham,  to  pay  those  addresses  to 
the  fair  Dorothy  which  belong  wholly  to  the  novelist's 
imagination.  Indeed  this  was  inevitable,  or  he  would  have 
had  few  lady,'readers,  a  fact  of  which  so  practised  a  writer  was 
no  doubt  more  than  conscious.  For,  if  memory  serves  me 


HEXHAM,   BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    187 

rightly,  these  are  the  only  love  passages  in  an  excellent 
though  somewhat  tedious  historical  sketch.  Even  they 
are  rather  flat,  as  the  willing  fair,  for  whom  the  faithful 
tutor  also  cherishes  a  secret  and  hopeless  affection,  is 
forbidden  to  accept  his  lordship  on  account  of  his  faith,  and 
we  all  know  that  he  very  soon  found  consolation.  It  does 
not  seem  to  me  quite  fair  to  take  these  liberties  with  his- 
torical personages,  and  in  this  case  to  portray  the  poor  Lady 
Derwentwater  of  reality  as  merely  catching  the  heart  of  a 
blighted  being  on  the  rebound. 

But  the  memories  of  the  'fifteen,  though  thick  over  many 
parts  of  Northumberland,  are  thickest  at  Dilston,  and  Dilston 
is  only  two  miles  from  Hexham.  It  is  hardly  worth  noting 
that  I  passed  through  it  on  my  homeward  journey  from 
Blanchland,  as  I  made  several  little  expeditions  thither, 
partly  on  Lord  Derwentwater's  account  and  partly  on  others, 
here  irrelevant.  It  was  after  leaving  Blanchland  that  the 
main  purpose  for  which  I  had  pushed  a  cycle  for  so  much 
of  the  way  thither,  instead  of  discarding  such  dubious  assist- 
ance, was  achieved,  but  the  achievement,  though  it  remains 
one  among  a  thousand  memories  I  would  not  dispense  with, 
calls  for  no  special  record  here.  I  ran  for  many  miles  along 
an  excellent  road  lifted  somewhat  above  the  Derwent,  which 
coursed  through  grassy  meads,  while  on  my  right  the  purple 
moors  of  Durham  rose  towards  the  finest  solitudes  that 
county,  as  I  have  said,  still  boasts  of.  Sometimes  the  heather 
pressed  actually  on  to  the  highway,  while  farmhouses  of 
mellow  stone,  and  occasionally  suggestive  of  some  story  out 
of  the  common,  lay  below  the  road  and  above  the  river  bank. 
In  due  course  I  crossed  the  Derwent  again  at  Shotley  Bridge 
and  turned  northwards  towards  the  Tyne.  By  this  time  I 
had  worked  to  the  eastward  of  the  Blanchland  moors,  and 
the  long  ridges  over  which  my  still  rather  solitary  road  lay 
were  enclosed  in  great  pastures,  protected  here  and  there 
from  the  winter  blasts  by  narrow  belts  of  woodland.  Looking 
back  into  Durham  from  their  ridges  I  could  see  in  the 
distance  a  forest  of  tall  chimneys,  those  of  Consett,  I  think, 


188     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

belching  clouds  of  white  smoke  into  the  evening  air ;  the 
beginning  of  a  murky  land,  inhabited  by  another  type  of 
man  from  the  rural  Northumbrian,  and  speaking  another 
tongue.  I  descended  again  to  the  Tyne,  having  encountered 
few  wayfarers  in  a  dozen  miles,  at  the  picturesque  woods 
of  Riding  Mill.  Thence  turning  up  the  broad  highway  from 
Newcastle  to  Hexham,  as  the  sun  was  setting,  I  sped  easily 
along  to  my  first  glimpse  of  Dilston,  towering  amid  its  woods 
over  the  junction  of  the  Devil's  Water  and  the  Tyne,  and  so 
to  my  journey's  end. 

The  romantic  streams  of  the  Devil's  Water  retain  their 
romantic  qualities  to  the  last  For  at  the  point  just  men- 
tioned, where  they  pass  under  the  main  coach  road  to  their 
almost  immediate  junction  with  the  Tyne,  you  may  stand  on 
the  bridge  and  watch  them  breaking  out  of  the  wooded  gorge 
they  have  rioted  in  for  so  many  miles,  to  run  down  under 
still  pendent  foliage  and  in  broad  whimpling  shallows  to 
your  feet.  And  high  above  the  woody  banks  of  the 
stream,  at  the  outer  fringe  of  the  lawn  of  a  later  country 
house,  stand  what  is  left  of  the  halls  of  the  ill-fated  Derwent- 
water. 

The  rising  of  the  'fifteen  is  commonly  held  a  small 
affair  compared  to  the  drama  of  the  'forty-five,  and  in  most 
minds  is  but  a  hazy  incident  But  it  was  not  a  small  affair 
in  Scotland,  while  for  the  Northumberland  of  that  day  it 
was  serious  enough,  as  so  many  of  the  rash  adventurers 
were  Northumbrians  gentle  or  simple.  Dilston  is  far  more 
eloquent  of  its  memories  than  perhaps  any  other  place  in 
the  county,  not  because  the  movement  was  hatched  here, 
for  it  was  not,  nor  that  Lord  Derwentwater  was  a  leading 
conspirator,  for  this  was  not  the  case ;  but  when  things  were 
ripe,  he  was  almost  automatically  involved,  not  merely  as 
a  relative  and  early  playmate  of  the  young  prince,  but  still 
more  as  the  most  important  of  the  Stuart  sympathizers  and 
co-religionists  in  the  northern  counties.  His  dignified  end 
on  the  scaffold  has  identified  this  first  Stuart  rising  with  his 
name  more  than  with  that  of  any  other,  and  left  perhaps 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    189 

a  rather  distorted  impression  of  the  man  in  the  mind  of 
posterity,  as  a  partisan  and  leader.  The  confiscation  of  his 
great  estates,  held  in  part  to  this  day  by  Greenwich  Hospital, 
the  beneficiaries,  helps  to  keep  alive  the  memory  of  the 
'fifteen  in  Northumberland,  just  as  the  Crewe  trust  suggests 
the  Forsters  and  indirectly  the  same  hapless  incident.  The 
undoubted  personal  charm  and  high  character  and  popularity 
of  the  young  earl,  the  romantic  quality  of  Dilston,  the  pathos 
of  this  ivied  remnant  of  a  once  great  mansion  and  the  seat 
of  a  powerful  and  honourable  race,  is  very  real  and  very  rare. 
For  Dilston,  at  the  fatal  moment,  had  just  been  enlarged 
and  refitted  for  a  fresh  and  more  sumptuous  regime  than 
any  in  the  Radcliffe  history  and  under  the  most  auspicious 
circumstances.  Nor  did  any  other  family  succeed  the 
Radcliffes.  Its  empty  halls,  just  as  the  last  earl  left  them 
for  his  progress  to  the  scaffold,  were  abandoned  to  the 
bats  and  owls,  and  the  material  by  degrees  carted  away 
for  other  purposes.  What  is  left  is  the  earlier  portion,  the 
tower  and  rectangular  fortress  residence  of  red  sandstone, 
enlarged  and  adapted  in  James  the  First's  time  to  the  in- 
creasing amenities  and  greater  security  of  even  Border 
life.  This  stands  roof-high  but  roofless,  retaining,  however, 
its  mullioned  windows  and  fireplaces  as  intact  as  the  storms 
of  a  century  and  a  half  could  be  expected  to  leave  them, 
still  beautiful,  ivy-draped  and  tree-embowered.  All  other 
traces  of  the  once  great  establishment  have  been  swept 
away,  but  a  turreted  gateway  and  the  small  chapel  where 
the  family  worshipped ;  while  in  the  vault  beneath  many 
of  their  coffins,  including  that  of  the  headless  earl,  reposed 
till  quite  recent  years.  In  the  gorge  below  the  ruin,  the 
Devil's  Water  makes  music,  and  by  its  banks  the  "  Lord's 
Mill "  still  stands  among  the  trees. 

One  of  the  original  lords  of  Dilston  lies  vaguely  in  stone 
effigy  in  Hexham  Abbey.  But  the  Radcliffes  came  here 
from  their  ancient  seat  on  Derwentwater — whose  ruins  a 
thousand  people  know  for  one  that  has  heard  of  the  site  of 
Dilston — at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  marrying  the 


190     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

heiress  and  uniting  the  Cumbrian  and  Northumbrian  pro- 
perties in  the  family.  They  intermarried  with  the  Fenwicks, 
Greys,  and  other  Northumbrian  stocks  and  were  wealthy  and 
conspicuous.  The  Radcliffe,  who  reconstructed  the  house 
that  we  now  see  in  ruin,  paid  £137  in  nine  months  for 
brewing  malt,  so  numerous  and  thirsty  were  his  retainers. 
On  thirty  servants,  however,  by  the  same  account,  he  only 
expended  £60,  which  would  look  as  if  the  domestic  of  that 
time  drank  twice  the  value  of  his  annual  income  in  beer.  Sir 
Francis  Radcliffe  was  arrested  in  the  popish  plot,  merely  as 
a  Catholic,  however,  and  released  on  heavy  bonds.  Later 
on,  already  created  Earl  of  Derwentwater,  he  followed  James 
the  Second  into  exile.  His  son,  the  second  earl,  married 
Charles  the  Second's  daughter  by  the  Duchess  of  Cleveland, 
Lady  Mary  Tudor,  and  their  son  was  the  ill-fated  victim  of 
the  'fifteen.  The  latter  was  reared  among  the  little  group 
who  surrounded  the  exiled  James  at  Versailles,  and  was 
educated  with  the  young  prince,  in  whose  cause  he  lost  his 
life.  In  1710,  when  he  came  of  age,  his  father  being  then 
dead,  he  returned  to  England  and  to  his  estates,  where  he 
was  received  with  unbounded  satisfaction  as  the  head  of  a 
house  second  only  to  the  Percies,  and  the  Percies  were  at 
that  period  absentees.  A  lovable,  high-minded,  conscientious 
youth,  the  young  earl  acquired  quick  popularity. 

"  O  Derwentwater's  a  bonny  lord, 
Fu'  yellow  is  his  hair, 
And  glinting  is  his  hawky  'ee 
Wi'  kind  love  dwalling  there." 

However  strong  his  political  sympathies,  he  had  certainly 
made  up  his  mind  to  accept  the  first  George  as  a  disagreeable 
but  inevitable  fact.  His  charities  and  good  will  were  lavished 
on  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike,  and  all  accounts  paint  him 
as  a  model  landlord.  He  married  the  daughter  of  a  Dorset- 
shire Baronet,  a  Miss  Webb,  and  in  1714  the  young  pair 
went  into  residence  at  Dilston.  In  the  next  year  Jacobite 
plots  began  to  brew  on  both  sides  of  the  Tweed.  The  earl's 
birth  and  antecedents  made  it  almost  incumbent  on  his 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,   AND  DILSTON     191 

honour  to  take  a  hand  in  any  definite  movement,  but  he  does 
not  seem  to  have  concerned  himself  much  in  bringing  one  on, 
nor  even  to  have  been  greatly  in  the  confidence  of  these 
over-sanguine  plotters  till  he  was  all  but  committed.  And, 
indeed,  he  had  an  enormous  stake  at  issue,  youth — wealth, 
popularity,  domestic  happiness,  everything  was  his.  None  of 
the  principals,  some  of  them  adventurers  with  nothing  to  lose 
but  their  heads,  seem  to  have  confided  much  in  him  till  the 
time  came  that  his  name  and  wealth  were  wanted.  When 
Government  was  assured  that  a  plot  was  brewing  and  issued 
warrant  of  arrest,  Lord  Derwentwater  was  naturally  one  of 
the  first  persons  to  secure,  if  only  as  a  mere  precaution,  and 
he  then  felt  that  he  had  to  make  his  choice  without  prepara- 
tion or  much  time  for  thought.  It  is  said  that  while  he 
hesitated  his  wife  clinched  the  matter ;  for  a  tradition  has  it 
that  she  flung  her  fan  down  and  suggested  that  he  should 
hand  her  his  sword.  He  left  Dilston  when  he  heard  of  the 
approaching  warrant,  and  remained  in  hiding,  sometimes 
with  his  friends  and  sometimes,  it  is  related,  in  a  cottage 
at  Newbiggin,  where  the  Dipton  Dene  joins  the  Devil's  Water. 
It  is  all  rather  cloudy,  but  it  is  obvious  that  the  poor  young 
man  was  torn  by  conflicting  impulses.  A  local  legend  tells 
how  the  supernatural  figure  of  a  woman  appeared  to  him  in 
the  romantic  gorge  of  the  Devil's  Water  at  Nunsbrough, 
upbraiding  him  for  not  being  already  in  arms,  giving  him  at 
the  same  time  a  crucifix  as  a  talisman  against  sword  and 
bullet.  He  was  at  Dilston,  however,  early  in  October,  and 
crossed  the  river  to  consult  at  this  eleventh  hour  with  Mr. 
Errington,  of  Beaufront,  a  Catholic  squire  of  ancient  family, 
but  then  distrustful  of  this  untimely  adventure.  His  older 
and  more  prudent  neighbour  is  said  to  have  taken  the  earl 
to  a  hill  above  his  house,  and  rubbed  in  his  urgent  remon- 
strances by  pointing  across  the  Tyne  to  the  fair  domain  of 
Dilston  filling  the  valley  and  ranging  far  over  the  hills.  The 
earl,  however,  replied  gloomily  that  it  was  too  late.  On  the 
next  morning  he  mustered  some  thirty  of  his  retainers  at 
Dilston,  mounted  and  armed  them,  and,  with  his  brother 


192     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Charles,  set  off  for  the  rendezvous  at  Greenrigg,  near  Wood- 
burn,  in  Redesdale,  where  the  local  Jacobites  had  at  length 
decided  to  declare  open  war  on  George  the  First  on  this  6th 
of  October.  Patten,  their  chaplain,  who  went  through  the 
campaign,  and  has  written  fully  of  it,  attributes  this  some- 
what precipitate  and  ill-advised  move  to  the  fact  that  warrants 
were  out  against  many  of  the  leaders,  with  a  certainty  in 
their  minds  that  they  would  be  "clapped  up  in  several 
prisons,  and  being  examined  separately,  none  would  know 
what  his  friend  was  saying,  and  they  might  thus  unwittingly 
betray  each  other." 

The  Scottish  Jacobites  at  any  rate  had  a  stronger  case, 
and  were  already  out  in  force.  It  was  supposed  that  thousands 
in  England  were  only  waiting  for  a  sign,  and  that  a  fleet  and 
army  from  France  were  preparing  for  their  assistance.  The 
Derwentwater  party  crossed  the  Tyne  at  Corbridge,  halted 
at  Beaufront,  and  so  to  Greenrigg,  where  Thomas  Forster 
and  others  brought  up  their  numbers  to  sixty.  Thence  they 
proceeded  to  Rothbury,  Alnwick,  Warkworth,  and  Morpeth, 
proclaiming  King  James  the  Third  everywhere,  and  swelling 
their  force  to  three  hundred,  including  an  influx  of  Borderers, 
whose  long  slumbering  instincts  must  have  leaped  into  life 
again  at  such  a  chance.  Newcastle  met  them  with  closed 
gates,  whereat  the  little  army  of  horsemen  journeyed  back  to 
Hexham,  where  Lord  Kenmure,  with  two  hundred  men  from 
Galloway,  joined  them.  General  Carpenter  had  all  this  time 
been  advancing  with  a  force  of  regulars  from  the  south,  while 
Argyle  was  in  arms  for  the  Government  in  Scotland,  so  it  was 
decided  to  concentrate  with  Lord  Mar's  second  and  smaller 
Scottish  force  of  fourteen  hundred  at  Kelso,  under  Mackintosh, 
making  two  thousand  in  all.  There  they  listened  to  a  sermon 
from  Mr.  Patten,  who  preached  from  the  text,  "  The  right  of 
the  first  born."  There  is  no  need  to  follow  the  disputes  that 
arose,  or  the  injudicious  councils  that  prevailed,  as  the  rebel 
army  wandered  aimlessly  along  the  Cheviots.  The  majority, 
including,  it  is  said,  the  Radcliffes,  wanted  first  to  secure 
Scotland  as  a  base.  The  Northumbrians,  however,  and  some 


HEXHAM,   BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON     193 

others,  believed  in  the  twenty  thousand  Lancastrians  that 
were  depicted  as  burning  for  the  fray.  The  southern  plan 
prevailing,  most  of  the  Scottish  Highlanders  went  home,  and 
the  combined  force,  growing  again  on  the  march  to  nearly 
two  thousand,  mostly  mounted,  men,  entered  England  at 
Longtown.  Near  Penrith  ten  or  twelve  thousand  militia  were 
drawn  up  to  oppose  them.  Being  armed  mainly  with  pitch- 
forks, entirely  unmartial  and  very  hungry,  the  sight  of  the 
Jacobites  proved  altogether  too  much,  and  the  rustics  fled 
incontinently,  the  invaders  eating  the  dinner  in  Penrith  that 
had  been  spread  for  their  officers,  and  proclaiming  James  the 
Third  afterwards.  On  November  10  they  reached  Preston, 
having,  so  far,  found  the  Lancastrians  almost  failures  as 
Jacobites.  There,  however,  great  numbers  joined  them  with 
their  servants  and  raised  the  army  to  three  thousand.  Preston 
might  have  been  easily  defended,  but  Forster's  ignorance  of 
war,  lack  of  nerve  and  common  sense,  together  with  divided 
councils,  bungled  everything.  The  natural  defence  of  bridge 
and  river  were  neglected  and  the  Jacobite  army  huddled 
behind  barricades  in  the  town.  When  General  Wigan,  how- 
ever, with  four  or  five  regiments,  arrived  and  attacked  the 
place  on  the  I3th,  he  was  repulsed  with  the  loss  of  over  three 
hundred  men.  Next  day  General  Carpenter  arrived,  and 
Forster,  without  apparently  consulting  his  staff,  submitted  to 
an  unconditional  surrender.  There  was  great  confusion  and 
outspoken  indignation.  Derwentwater  had  distinguished 
himself  in  the  fight  of  the  previous  day,  and,  with  many 
others,  was  for  cutting  his  way  through  the  enemy.  How- 
ever, we  all  know  the  end,  when  seventy  gentlemen,  among 
whom  Northumbrians  prevailed,  and  one  hundred  and  forty 
Scotsmen  of  the  same  quality,  together  with  fourteen  hundred 
men,  surrendered  unconditionally. 

With  the  treatment  of  the  bulk  of  these  we  have  nothing 
to  do,  but  it  was,  on  the  whole,  savage.  Deep  snow,  and  the 
hardest  winter  of  thirty  years,  had  set  in.  The  prisoners 
were  confined  in  frigid  churches  and  jails  in  Lancaster  and 
at  Chester.  Numbers  died  from  exposure  and  fever,  and 
o 


194.     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

numbers  were  shipped  to  plantations  ;  many  of  the  better 
sort  were  shot.  Two  hundred  were  despatched  to  London, 
including  Derwentwater,  his  brother,  Forster,  and  Lords 
Kenmure,  Nithsdale,  Carnwarth,  Nairn,  and  Widdrington, 
and  other  leaders.  They  rode  through  London  two  and  two, 
their  arms  pinioned,  and  a  soldier  with  fixed  bayonet  lead- 
ing each  horse.  Of  the  five  lords  condemned,  two  were 
pardoned,  and  one  escaped.  Derwentwater  and  Kenmure 
alone  suffered  the  extreme  penalty.  Desperate  and  pathetic 
efforts  were  made  by  Lady  Derwentwater  and  other  wives 
concerned  to  save  their  husbands.  But  the  king  himself,  who 
was  frequently  waylaid  by  them  and  their  relatives,  seems  to 
have  been  little  touched.  Derwentwater's  demeanour,  both 
before  and  at  his  death,  commanded  respectful  admiration. 
He  was  executed  on  February  24,  1716,  on  Tower  Hill,  and 
his  remains  were  brought  to  the  family  vault  under  the 
chapel  at  Dilston.  His  brother  Charles  was  condemned 
some  weeks  later  but  escaped  to  France,  and  lived  to  fight 
in  the  'forty-five  and  die  on  the  scaffold.  He  occasionally 
paid  secret  visits  to  England,  and  had  a  fancy  for  treading 
the  deserted  shades  of  Dilston,  and  frightening  the  rustics 
almost  to  death,  who  mistook  him  for  his  brother's  ghost, 
that  in  their  imaginations  had  already  established  a  footing 
there.  Of  this  eccentric  person  it  is  related  that,  having  been 
refused  sixteen  times  by  a  widow,  and  denied  further  admis- 
sion to  her,  he  descended  the  chimney  of  her  apartment,  and 
throwing  himself  at  her  feet,  melted  her  heart  by  so  heroic  an 
act  of  persistent  devotion. 

Forster,  who  was  condemned,  escaped  by  means  of  a 
false  key  supplied  to  him  by  his  intrepid  sister,  whose  winter 
journey  to  London  on  horseback  behind  a  blacksmith  is,  of 
course,  a  familiar  story,  though  the  performance  of  Lady 
Nithesdale,  who  saved  her  husband  by  changing  clothes  with 
him  and  risking  the  vengeance  of  the  Crown,  seems  at  least 
as  heroic.  The  more  prolonged  nature  of  the  Scottish  opera- 
tions, the  battle  of  Sherriffmuir,  and  the  futile  landing  of  the 
Chevalier,  do  not  concern  us  here.  With  a  good  leader,  the 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON     195 

Scottish  rising  would  have  been  as  formidable  as  that  of  the 
'forty-five.  The  Dilston  estate  was  sold  some  thirty  years 
ago  to  a  private  purchaser.  But  when  still  in  the  hands  of 
the  well-known  Mr.  Charles  Grey,  as  administrator  for  the 
hospital  estates,  it  provided  a  prolonged  and  delightful  sensa- 
tion for  the  people  of  Hexham,  and  much  entertaining 
material  for  the  London  press. 

Now,  Lord  Derwentwater  left  a  son,  who  died  a  youth  in 
1731,  and  in  1868  a  lady  of  unquestioned  talents,  and,  accord- 
ing to  some,  great  personal  attractions,  sat  down  on  her  boxes 
in  front  of  the  ruins  of  Dilston,  and  proclaimed  herself  a  grand- 
daughter of  this  youth,  whose  death  she  declared  had  been 
simulated,  and  heir  to  the  Derwentwater  estates.  She  styled 
herself  Amelia,  Countess  of  Derwentwater.  She  produced  a 
pedigree,  and  gave  elaborate  reasons  for  the  pretended  death 
of  her  so-called  grandfather.  She  was  well  supplied  with  a 
number  of  relics  said  to  have  been  taken  from  Dilston  and 
the  house  on  Derwentwater  while  the  last  earl  lay  in  the 
tower,  and  stored  on  the  Continent  ever  since.  She  and  her 
friends  next  proceeded  to  roof  in  one  of  the  ruinous  rooms  in 
the  tower  with  tarpaulin,  and  to  take  up  her  residence  there 
in  company  with  her  collection  of  family  relics,  and  even 
hoisted  the  family  banner  on  the  castle  wall.  She  petitioned 
Parliament,  and  also  issued  warnings  to  the  Dilston  tenantry 
to  pay  their  rents  to  her.  Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  a  few 
obeyed,  or  attempted  to  obey,  this  extraordinary  demand. 
She  gave  Mr.  Grey,  who  lived  at  the  later  manor  house,  no 
end  of  trouble.  For  after  he  had  ejected  her  with  some 
difficulty  from  her  ancestral  ruin,  she  encamped  on  the  road- 
side, and  became  the  object  of  pilgrimages  not  merely  from 
Hexham,  but  from  all  over  the  country.  Quite  fortuitously 
it  so  happens,  that  the  immediate  neighbour  and  friend  of  the 
late  Mr.  Grey  of  Dilston,  and  intimately  associated  with  him 
throughout  this  extraordinary  business,  is  an  old  acquaintance 
of  my  own,  and  he  gave  me  recently,  by  his  own  fireside  in 
Scotland,  the  whole  strange  story.  Local  accounts  all  dwell 
on  this  eccentric  claimant's  good  looks.  My  friend,  who 


196     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

ought  to  know,  denies  this,  but  credits  her  with  amazing 
cleverness,  though  obviously  to  him  from  the  very  first  a  rank 
impostor.  But  this  was  not  the  view  of  numbers  of  other- 
wise sensible  persons  in  the  locality,  who  became  her 
champions,  and  the  lady  herself  became  the  cause  for  months 
of  serious  breaches  between  old  friends,  such  as  those  of  us 
who  remember  the  Tichbourne  case  can  well  believe.  There 
are  elderly  men  of  sound  sense  still  living  in  and  about 
Hexham  to  whom  it  is  not,  I  believe,  advisable  to  mention 
the  name  of  Amelia,  Countess  of  Derwentwater,  so  greatly 
were  they  taken  in.  Thousands  came  to  see  her  in  her 
gipsy-like  encampment  by  the  high  road  below  Dilston,  and 
as  many  believed  in  her.  Some  advanced  money. 

As  the  story  of  the  Bogus  Countess  is  permanently 
embalmed  in  the  history  of  Tynedale,  and  is  apt  to  be 
told  with  the  embellishments  natural  to  an  incident  that 
is  sensational  rather  than  important,  I  will  ask  the  general 
reader's  indulgence  for  closing  this  chapter  with  a  brief 
statement  written  for  me  by  the  above-mentioned  friend, 
who,  as  already  remarked,  was  together  with  Mr.  Grey  of 
Dilston  more  personally  and  intimately  concerned  with  the 
transaction  than  any  other  person  in  the  country,  and 
resident  at  Dilston  throughout  it : — 

"In  1868  a  lady  calling  herself  Amelia  Radcliffe  came  to  reside 
in  Hexham,  and  alleged  that  she  was  descended  from  the  Earls  of 
Derwentwater,  the  memory  of  whose  noble  qualities  and  good  deeds 
still  lingered  among  the  inhabitants.  She  was  rarely  seen,  and  was 
said  to  occupy  herself  in  gathering  together  ancient  furniture  as  well 
as  pieces  of  armour  and  military  accoutrements,  which,  as  the  sequel 
proved,  were  to  be  used  in  furthering  her  scheme  for  getting  posses- 
sion of  the  ancient  estates,  which,  since  the  attainder  of  the  earl, 
bad  been  the  property  of  the  Commissioners  of  Greenwich  Hospital. 
She  was  also  said  to  have  in  her  possession  a  birth  certificate  of  an 
Amelia  Radcliffe,  but  no  one  who  saw  her  close  would  believe  that 
her  real  birth  could  have  been  of  less  than  fifteen  years'  earlier  date. 
Her  plans  were  prepared  in  perfect  secrecy,  and  she  proceeded  to 
carry  them  out  in  this  same  autumn,  when  Mr.  Grey,  the  agent  for 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,   AND  DILSTON     197 

the  estates,  was  surprised  to  find  her  sitting  in  her  chair  of  state,  in 
what  was  formerly  the  banqueting-hall  of  the  now  ruined  castle, 
with  her  ancient  furniture  and  weapons  displayed,  accompanied  by 
a  few  friends.  When  challenged,  she  replied  that  she  was  the 
Countess  of  Derwentwater,  the  real  owner  and  possessor.  As  she 
seemed  quite  serious  in  her  intention  of  holding  the  fort,  the  agent 
was  obliged  to  call  in  the  aid  of  estate  labourers,  who,  as  she  refused 
to  be  detached  from  her  chair,  carried  her  out  in  it,  and  set  her 
down  in  the  highway  near  at  hand  with  her  furniture.  Having  thus 
been  removed  by  force,  she  refused  to  go  voluntarily  any  further,  and 
her  supporters  proceeded  to  erect  a  shelter  for  her  as  the  weather 
was  very  cold,  procuring  old  doors  and  planks,  covered  with  stack- 
covers  and  tarpaulins,  and  in  this  hovel  she  remained  for  several 
weeks,  expecting,  no  doubt,  a  rising  of  the  people  in  support  of  her 
claims.  Great  sympathy  was  shown  her  by  all  classes ;  food  and 
comforts  were  sent  to  her  by  many,  and  thousands  flocked  to  see 
her  and  her  habitation.  So  much  so  that  there  was  no  room  for 
travellers  to  pass  along  the  highway.  At  the  first  meeting  of  the 
district  Highway  Board,  this  was  so  clearly  set  forth,  that  instructions 
were  given  to  the  waywarden  of  the  township  to  have  the  obstruction 
removed,  which,  after  a  show  of  resistance,  was  done.  The  '  countess ' 
took  up  her  residence  for  the  winter  near  Shotley  bridge,  where 
among  the  colliers  and  iron  workers  she  had  many  friends,  and 
the  excitement  gradually  abated  in  the  Hexham  district.  The  winter 
passed  quietly,  but  towards  spring  there  were  rumours  of  pressure 
being  brought  to  bear  on  outlying  farms,  for  the  tenants  to  pay  at 
least  a  portion  of  their  rent  to  the  claimant,  and  with  some  success, 
as  the  '  countess,'  with  her  posse  of  pitmen  and  idlers,  by  a  show 
of  strength  induced  several  of  the  tenants  to  buy  her  off  by  a  pay- 
ment. She  made  her  next  move  on  the  rent  day  of  the  Dilston 
tenants,  held  in  the  Anchor  Inn  at  Haydon  Bridge,  where  she 
appeared  with  an  imposing  band  of  supporters,  and  announced  her 
intention  of  collecting  her  rents  in  the  hotel.  This  demand  for 
accommodation,  to  which  she  was  entitled  as  a  bona  fide  traveller, 
having  come  about  twenty  miles  by  road,  was  unwisely  refused 
by  the  innkeeper,  as  he  had  plenty  of  room  in  the  house.  This 
aroused  the  strong  feelings  of  both  parties,  so  that  there  was  a  risk 
of  violent  scenes,  but  after  some  altercation  it  was  granted,  and  she 
held  her  audit  without  molestation  and  without  success.  Little  was 


198     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

heard  of  the  '  countess '  till  May  of  the  following  year,  when  just 
before  the  term  she  took  possession,  with  her  furniture  and  supporters, 
of  a  cottage  at  Dilston,  occupied  by  a  ploughman  who  was  known 
to  be  a  'countess  man,'  and  who  was  leaving  at  the  term.  The 
tenant  of  the  farm,  having  engaged  a  ploughman  to  take  the  place 
of  the  former  one  at  the  term,  naturally  had  to  make  arrangements 
to  get  possession,  and  to  use  all  necessary  force  to  compel  the 
'  countess '  to  evacuate  it.  This,  of  course,  was  done  in  perfect 
secrecy,  as  if  any  action  were  known  to  be  contemplated,  an  im- 
mense crowd  would  have  assembled  and  hindered  its  success.  On 
the  term-day  at  noon,  the  previous  tenant  having  left  that  morning, 
and  the  '  countess '  in  possession,  and  the  new  tenant,  as  well  as  a 
body  of  police,  being  timed  to  arrive  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
later,  the  farmer  went  to  the  cottage,  and,  knocking  at  the  door, 
got  a  reply  to  his  request  that  he  might  have  an  audience  with  the 
'  countess '  from  an  upper  window — that  she  refused  to  see  him.  The 
farmer  then  called  to  one  of  his  labourers  to  fetch  a  sledge  hammer, 
and  broke  the  door  open.  On  entering  her  room  upstairs  he  ex- 
plained to  her  that  his  new  tenant  was  on  the  point  of  arriving,  and 
requested  her  to  remove  quietly,  but  she  treated  this  proposal  with 
scorn,  and  with  many  threats  of  punishment  for  his  presumption. 
Knowing  that  the  police  had  arrived,  he  informed  her  that  he  would 
give  her  five  minutes  to  make  up  her  mind,  and  then  if  she  did  not 
move  he  would  be  obliged  to  put  her  and  her  company  and  effects 
out  on  the  road.  When  the  farmer  went  to  hear  her  decision,  she 
was  violent,  and  determined  to  remain.  So,  with  the  help  of  two 
or  three  labourers,  she  and  her  goods  were  removed  on  to  the  road, 
and  as  soon  as  the  last  stick  was  out,  the  new  ploughman's  furniture 
was  put  in. 

"  However,  as  the  police  were  in  force,  and  were'ready  to  make 
her  remove  from  the  highway,  she  had  her  chair  taken  to  the 
opposite  side  of  the  road,  but  by  measurement  it  was  ascertained 
that  it  was  encroaching  on  the  tenant's  ground  on  that  side,  and 
she  was  moved  on  to  the  road  again,  so  between  the  farmer  and 
the  police  she  found  the  situation  so  untenable  that  she  was  obliged 
to  take  her  departure  to  Corbridge,  where  she  had  many  supporters, 
who,  had  they  known  what  was  being  enacted  within  a  mile  of  them, 
would  certainly  have  struck  some  blows  for  the  sake  of  their  beloved 
'  countess.'  She  was  scarcely  ever  mentioned  by  any  of  her  supporters 


HEXHAM,  BLANCHLAND,  AND  DILSTON    199 

again,  which  one  can  readily  understand.  She  disappeared  hence- 
forth from  the  neighbourhood,  and,  I  believe,  spent  the  remainder 
of  her  days  at  the  mining  village  of  Consett  in  Durham." 

Thus  ended  the  career  of  a  remarkable  and  barefaced 
impostor;  a  lonely  woman,  hitherto  unsupported,  totally 
unaccredited  and  unintroduced  to  the  neighbourhood.  That 
she  gained  such  wide  support  is  the  best  tribute  to  her 
cleverness,  which  made  as  much  impression  on  my  friend 
and  informant  as  did  the  impossibility  in  his  eyes  from 
the  very  first  of  her  being  what  she  claimed  to  be.  The 
London  papers  sent  their  correspondents  down,  and  more 
than  one  of  them  became,  for  the  moment,  such  violent 
"  countess  men "  that  they  treated  the  reading  public  to 
violent  diatribes  against  the  defenders  of  the  Dilston 
property. 


CHAPTER  IX 
CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD 

A  LMOST  immediately  opposite  Dilston,  hugging  the  foot 
XJL  of  the  long  slope  that  rises  from  the  north  bank  of  the 
Tyne,  is  the  large  village  of  Corbridge,  which,  like  its  now 
vastly  more  important  neighbour  of  Hexham,  is  no  mere  collec- 
tion of  houses,  but  a  place  where  things  of  import  were  con- 
tinually happening  in  ancient  times.  Long  before  St.  Wilfrid 
founded  Hexham  and  created  at  the  same  time  a  smaller 
monastery  here,  the  Romans  had  founded  Corbridge  and,  what 
is  more,  constructed  a  bridge  over  the  wide  and  formidable 
waters  of  the  Tyne,  some  of  the  piers  of  which  were  visible 
till  quite  recently.  No  river  in  England  probably  has  been 
so  severe  on  its  bridges  as  the  Tyne.  The  seven  wide  and 
graceful  arches  that  span  it  here,  and  lend  further  distinction 
to  the  little  town,  are  the  only  ones  in  its  entire  course  that 
have  remained  unconquered  by  its  fury,  which  they  have  now 
braved  for  nearly  two  centuries  and  a  half.  In  1771  every 
other  bridge^on  the  river  was  swept  away.  Beneath  this  one 
can  still  be  sometimes  seen  the  remains  of  its  predecessor, 
which  was  built  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Third,  and  made 
Corbridge  an  important  strategetic  point  throughout  the  whole 
period  of  the  Border  wars.  One  may  fancy  the  little  Derwent- 
water  cavalcade  clattering  over  it  to  their  fate,  some  on  coach 
or  plough  horses,  and  all  carrying  weapons  they  had  never 
seriously  wielded,  while  at  the  further  side,  adjoining 
Corbridge  on  the  west,  stretching  from  the  river  bank  to 
the  summit  of  the  distant  ridge,  are  the  noble  woods  and 
green  parklands  of  Beaufront,  whither  they  were  bound  for 
their  first  rendezvous. 

200 


CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD      201 

Lifted  well  above  the  river  bank,  and  facing  cheerfully  to 
the  south,  there  is  very  little  here  of  the  austerity  that  broods 
over  so  many  places  in  the  north.  The  main,  and  most 
obvious  of  its  arteries,  running  parallel  with  the  river,  is 
spacious  to  a  degree,  and  fringed  on  either  side  with  modest 
residences  of  diverse  structure  and  date,  but  mostly  of  natural 
indigenous  appearance,  some  of  them  luxuriantly  muffled  in 
creepers  ;  one  or  two  showing  ancient  fronts,  while  another  is 
annexed  to  a  lusty  pele  tower  in  fine  preservation.  There  is 
abundant  overhanging  foliage,  too,  and  pleasant  patches  of 
garden  beneath,  with  suggestions  of  peaceful  shades  behind. 
All  is  well  ordered  and  well  looking,  due  perhaps  to  the  fact 
that  certain  Newcastrians  of  discrimination  have  entered  into 
possession,  and  had  no  cause  and  probably  no  desire  to 
uproot  things  more  than  necessary.  Then  there  are  some 
few  brief  and  narrow  ways  of  utilitarian  aspect  leading  into 
a  small  market-place.  The  predecessor  of  its  present  cross 
was  fashioned  out  of  a  Roman  altar,  and  the  church  which 
fills  one  side  of  the  space  was  built  in  part  during  Saxon 
times  of  material  from  the  large  Roman  station  that  lay  near 
by  to  the  westward.  There  was  surely  a  breezy  absence  of 
prejudice  about  these  earlier  Christians,  or,  dare  we  say,  of  a 
sense  of  humour,  too,  in  thus  mounting  the  emblem  of  their 
faith  on  altars  inscribed  to  pagan  gods,  and  fitting  them  so 
frequently  into  the  spare  corners  of  their  churches  ?  We,  at 
any  rate,  are  glad  enough  to  have  the  altars,  and  may  be 
thankful  that  monks  and  not  Covenanters  had  the  handling 
of  so  many.  I  am  not  going  to  say  anything  about  Roman 
finds  at  Corbridge,  which  were  receiving,  indeed,  fresh 
encouragement  when  I  was  there,  because  there  is  every 
prospect  of  getting  to  the  station  of  Chesters  in  the  course  of 
this  very  chapter,  and  if  I  were  to  pause  at  every  Roman 
camp  in  this  once  great  centre  of  Roman  power,  this  little 
narrative  would  develop  into  an  indifferent  catalogue  of  their 
remains.  But  Corbridge,  the  Corstopitum  of  the  Romans, 
situated  where  Watling  Street  crossed  the  Tyne,  covered 
twenty-two  acres,  and  seems  to  have  been  actually  the  largest 


202     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

station  in  the  north,  and  among  other  relics  recovered  from 
its  site,  the  famous  lanx  or  silver  dish,  weighing  about  one 
hundred  and  fifty  ounces,  demands  mention.  It  is  now  at 
Alnwick,  and  carries  figures  in  bas-relief  which  are  believed 
to  represent  the  Judgment  of  Paris.  In  the  Saxon  period 
again,  for  the  last  two  centuries  of  the  Northumbrian 
monarchy,  Corbridge  was  even  more  the  actual  centre  of  its 
power  than  Bamburgh,  which  had  become  too  dangerously 
near  the  frontier. 

Once  upon  a  time  there  were  four  churches  in  Corbridge, 
not  an  unmixed  blessing  according  to  one  chronicler,  as  they 
were  the  haunt  of  felons  from  the  county  gaol  and  elsewhere 
who  took  advantage  of  the  sanctuary  they  afforded.  The  fine 
old  church  surviving  in  these  times,  when  people  have  devised 
so  many  various  routes  to  Paradise,  must  now  be  ample  for  all 
needs.  The  tower,  as  already  related,  and  part  of  the  nave 
is  Saxon  work  of  Roman  materials.  The  most  striking 
feature,  however,  is  the  sturdy  pele  tower  still  standing  at 
the  edge  of  the  churchyard,  where  the  parson  lived  secure, 
and  no  doubt  sheltered  his  friends,  when  the  Scots  visited 
Corbridge,  which  they  did  constantly,  to  say  nothing  of  those 
predatory  cosmopolitans  who  dwelt  by  the  waters  of  the  north 
Tyne  and  Rede  and  amid  the  wilds  of  Bewcastle.  King 
John,  always  acquisitive,  was  so  struck  with  the  signs  of  ancient 
grandeur  at  Corbridge  that  he  instituted  mining  operations 
for  buried  treasure  in  all  directions,  and  indeed  there  actually 
had  been  a  mint  here  in  the  latter  days  of  the  Northumbrian 
Kingdom.  Robert  Bruce  quartered  his  army  in  Corbridge  for 
a  long  time,  and  it  was  during  his  fierce  struggle  with 
Edward  the  First  that  Bruce,  or  his  captains,  made  a  bonfire 
of  the  town  school  and  its  two  hundred  scholars,  whom  one 
is  surprised  to  find  at  their  desks  amid  such  a  clash  of  arms 
and  such  a  chronic  hurly-burly.  A  dozen  years  later  he  burnt 
the  whole  town,  for  the  rebuilding  of  which  many  mighty  oak 
trees  were  felled  at  Bywell,  now  a  picturesque  village  a  mile 
or  two  down  the  river,  the  last,  perhaps,  that  may  fairly  be 
called  so  on  the  Tyne. 


CORBRIDGE  TO   CHOLLERFORD  203 

We  started  one  morning  of  fair  promise  in  August  for  a 
day's  walk  in  the  broken  country  that  spreads  back  from 
Corbridge  to  the  line  of  the  Roman  wall.  It  was  not  on  this 
occasion  for  the  latter's  sake,  as  on  this  eastern  section  it  has 
practically  disappeared,  but  for  certain  relics,  mostly  of 
another  age  altogether,  which  my  companion,  a  son  of  the 
soil,  assured  me  would  reveal  themselves  at  intervals  along 
our  proposed  line  of  march.  First  and  most  highly  appraised 
of  these  was  that  of  Aydon  hall,  or  castle,  the  very  un- 
certainty of  classification  here  hinted  at  being  in  fact  some 
tribute  to  its  attractiveness  ;  for  Aydon  is  neither  the  one 
nor  the  other,  but  a  great  fortified  manor-house  of  the  class 
of  Stokesay,  near  Ludlow,  and  of  the  same  period.  It  was 
a  short  two-mile  walk  thither,  and  when  we  had  mounted  the 
bank  above  Corbridge  by  a  lane — everything  under  about 
fifteen  hundred  feet,  be  it  noted,  is  a  "bank,"  on  the  northern 
as  on  the  Welsh  Border — we  followed  a  field  footpath,  in  due 
course  dipping  into  a  woody  dene,  and  above  its  further 
cliff  saw  grey  walls  and  towers  looming  gloriously  above  the 
foliage  of  great  trees,  while  a  prattling  burn  struck  harmonious 
chords  in  the  ravine.  Crossing  it  and  mounting  the  steep  by 
a  winding  path,  between  the  stems  of  tall  oak  and  ash  trees, 
this  grim  thirteenth-century  fortress  house  reared  itself  aloft 
right  across  our  path.  The  sky,  too,  had  suddenly  blackened, 
and  a  passing  storm  moaned  in  the  tree  tops,  and  beat  against 
the  battlemented  walls.  For  my  part  I  accepted  this  sudden 
fit  of  elemental  temper  with  more  than  complacency,  so  did 
my  companion.  We  had  not  come  here  to  a  picnic,  nor  for  a 
view,  nor  yet  to  make  sketches,  but  to  dream  dreams,  if  so 
inadequate  a  phrase  may  be  used  for  the  flights  one's  fancies 
take  before  the  mute  eloquence  of  such  places  as  this. 

Aydon  was  built  in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  has  been 
little  pulled  about.  It  is  all  in  its  favour,  too,  that  it  continues 
a  simple  farmhouse,  and  still  unravaged  by  the  innovations 
of  a  more  exacting  social  life.  For  though  the  property  in 
early  times  of  various  territorial  magnates,  notably  the 
Carnabys,  it  seems  rarely  if  ever  to  have  been  the  residence 


201     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

of  this  type  of  person,  but  a  grange,  pure  and  simple,  though 
in  size,  dignity,  and  strength,  a  worthy  enough  seat  for  a 
Carnaby,  a  Clavering,  a  Fenwick  or  a  Grey ;  a  place  that  has 
been  concerned  with  securing  its  own  rather  than  distant 
adventures,  though  plenty  of  illustrious  Scottish  invaders 
have  sat  down  before  it.  Standing  on  the  high  brink  of  the 
ravine,  it  offers  much  the  same  stern  front  to  us  as  it  did  to 
them :  buttressed,  battlemented,  stone-roofed,  and  pierced 
with  three  stories  of  small-pointed,  or  square,  double-light 
windows,  and  mere  slits  on  the  lower  floor.  The  outer  wall 
of  the  main  building  is  nearly  flush  with  the  slope.  Massive 
crenulated  towers  support  the  angles  ;  and  where  no  build- 
ings present  their  impregnable-looking  backs  to  the  line  of 
defence,  the  original  curtain  wall  is  still  intact.  There  are 
three  courts,  and  in  the  small  inner  one,  leading  to  the 
entrance,  is  an  exterior  stone  staircase,  leading  to  a  large 
pointed  doorway,  within  which  is  the  great  hall.  Several 
imposing  portions  of  the  original  fireplaces  remain,  and  over 
one  may  still  be  seen  the  arms  of  the  Carnabys.  Everywhere 
facing  the  courtyard,  as  overlooking  the  ravine,  are  the  small 
double  or  single-light  windows,  either  round  or  square,  with 
wide  splays,  showing  the  immense  thickness  of  the  walls. 
The  same  windows  are  seen  even  in  the  stables,  where  the 
arched  roof  and  the  very  mangers  are  of  stone,  eloquent 
after  all  these  centuries  with  defiance  of  the  Borderer's  torch. 
One  outer  court  on  the  edge  of  the  ravine  is  now  a  pleasant 
plateau  garden,  overlooked  by  grey  walls  and  towers ;  while 
leaves  rustle  in  profusion  above  the  murmur  of  waters  in  the 
hollow  beneath.  There  is  a  spot  just  here  known  as  "Jock's 
leap,"  down  which  a  Scottish  raider  of  that  name  jumped  for 
his  life,  while  the  rest  of  his  captured  companions  were  being 
flung  neck  and  crop  from  the  tower  by  Sir  Robert  Clavering. 
The  storm  had  ceased,  but  the  skies  still  held  and,  as  it 
proved,  retained  their  gloom  as  we  turned  northward,  leaving 
the  courtyard  of  the  old  fortress  noisy  with  the  clamour  of  a 
flock  of  sheep,  that  had  been  driven  in  from  their  pasture  for 
some  purpose  connected  either  with  their  well-being,  or  an 


CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD      205 

approaching  market.  A  short  mile  along  an  open  lane, 
between  pastures  that  I  was  told  were  among  the  best  in 
Northumberland,  and  associated  in  past  times  with  some  of 
the  kings  and  queens  of  the  shorthorn  herd  book,  and 
another  fortress  house  confronted  us,  lying  at  its  ease  and 
in  the  open  among  them.  It  is  permissible  to  think  that 
lands  which  old  records  show  to  be  exceptionally  dear  and 
cultivated  with  unusual  assiduity,  even  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  warranted  the  fortifying  of  these  two  great  granges 
in  their  midst.  Halton,  however,  this  other  one,  served  as  a 
regular  domicile  for  various  potent  persons,  one  or  two  of 
whom  were  in  the  raiding,  as  well  as  in  the  grazing  business. 
We  did  not  enter  here,  but  the  battlemented  tower  is  a  very 
striking  one,  pierced  with  arrow  slits  above  the  square-headed 
windows  of  the  first  storey,  while  a  round  turret  on  corbels 
stands  out  at  each  corner  of  the  battlements.  Two  low  wings 
abut  from  the  tower  of  fifteenth  and  seventeenth  century 
work  respectively.  The  whole  being  now  occupied,  I  think,  as 
a  vicarage,  and  set  amid  pleasant  gardens,  makes  a  singularly 
harmonious  picture.  It  is  not  stern  and  sombre  in  aspect 
and  situation,  like  its  older  neighbour  of  Aydon.  Even  the 
intensely  mediaeval  and  warlike-looking  tower  loses  some- 
thing of  its  austerity  from  the  low  warm-looking  manor- 
house  beneath  it,  the  garden  that  blooms  around,  the  rich 
open  slope  on  which  it  lies,  and  the  far-reaching  views  over 
the  vale  of  the  Tyne,  which  it  commands.  According  to  Mr. 
Bates  and  Mr.  Hodgson,  from  whom,  when  united  in  matters 
Northumbrian,  there  could  scarcely  be  any  appeal,  Halton 
was  one  of  several  manors,  left  at  the  Conquest,  in  possession 
of  a  Saxon  owner,  to  be  held  of  the  king  in  capite,  and  in  the 
twelfth  century  it  was  certainly  thus  held  by  the  Thane 
Waltheof  de  Halton.  More  interesting  than  this  bare  fact 
is  that  of  a  dispute  regarding  the  right  to  a  portion  of  it 
having  been  settled  between  the  above-mentioned  Thane 
and  one  Simon  de  Roncester  by  "wager  of  battle."  It  is  a 
little  disillusioning,  however,  to  find  that  both  claimants 
fought  by  deputy,  the  honour  of  the  combat  and  the  lands 


206     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

remaining  to  the  Halton  champion.  The  Haltons  were  a 
tenacious  race,  remaining  in  possession  till  near  the  reign 
of  Edward  the  Fourth.  Carnabys  followed,  and  in  a  legal 
suit,  held  in  1391,  during  which  the  christening  date  of  a 
young  Carnaby  in  the  adjoining  church  required  corrobora- 
tion  by  witnesses,  some  quaint  touches  of  everyday  life  are 
preserved ;  nothing  in  themselves,  but  nevertheless  such 
trifles  as  bring  those  inscrutable  ancients  a  little  nearer. 
John  de  Hole,  for  instance,  remembered  the  day,  because  he 
bought  a  horse  of  the  child's  father,  and  one  sympathizes 
with  him,  well  realizing  how  readily  an  infelicitous  horse  deal 
might  have  burnt  that  day  into  the  memory  of  the  good 
John.  John  Strother,  again,  while  hunting  a  hare,  actually 
met  the  nurse  carrying  the  child  to  church.  Richard  Crasters' 
horse  fell  with  him  riding  back  to  Dilston  from  the  christen- 
ing, or  from  the  christening  feast,  no  doubt,  and  so  gave  him 
good  cause  to  remember  the  day.  Nicholas  Turpin,  who 
was  also  at  the  festival,  seems  a  little  inconsequent,  for  the 
incident  that  fastened  the  day  on  his  mind  was,  that  while 
riding  home  he  thought  he  saw  a  fox  breaking  out  of  a 
wood  with  the  huntsmen  after  him.  Possibly  John  Strother's 
hounds  swopped  in  the  afternoon  on  to  what  in  the  fourteenth 
century  and  for  centuries  afterwards  was  the  ignobler  game. 

The  little  church  where  the  christening  took  place  five 
hundred  years  ago  still  stands  above  the  roadside,  but  entirely 
rebuilt  save  for  a  portion  of  the  east  end.  Here,  too,  in 
strange  company  with  the  gravestones  beneath  the  trees,  is  a 
battered  Roman  altar,  though  for  that  matter  the  entire  house 
at  Halton  is,  I  believe,  built  of  stone  from  the  Roman  wall. 
For  within  half  a  mile  is  the  camp  of  Hunnums,  out  of  which, 
though  not  exhaustively  explored,  many  relics  have  been 
secured.  We  passed  by  its  grassy  site  and  on  to  the  patch  of 
high  common  land,  famous  throughout  Northumberland  as 
Stagshaw  bank,  where  a  fair,  of  nothing  like,  however,  its 
ancient  notoriety,  is  still  held.  What  Weyhill  was  to  Wilt- 
shire and  North- West  Hants,  and,  like  that  one,  an  out-of-the- 
wayi  uplandish  spot,  so  was  Stagshaw  bank  a  stamping-ground 


CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD      207 

for  the  racy  and  turbulent  folk  in  whom  the  blood  of  the 
raiders  still  ran  strong  even  when  cattle,  horses,'  and  sheep 
were  no  longer  lawful  prey,  but  subject  to  equivalents  in  kind 
or  cash.  There  is  a  curious  story  of  an  affray  here  occasioned 
by  the  outrageous  proceedings  of  a  family  of  Widdringtons, 
degenerate  scions,  if  scions  they  were,  of  that  famous  Border 
stock.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  cattle  or  sheep,  or  the 
legitimate  objects  of  the  gathering,  but  with  a  nefarious  trade 
in  human  cattle  that  these  people  had  apparently  engaged 
in  with  much  success,  namely,  the  kidnapping  of  likely 
Northumbrian  lads  for  the  Jamaica  market  in  slaves,  or  at 
least  in  indentured  white  labour.  This  was  at  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  several  worthy  young  peasants 
had  been  spirited  away  by  the  Widdrington  gang,  who  had 
established  a  sort  of  terror  in  these  parts  by  their  iniquitous 
and  high-handed  proceedings,  enforced,  too,  with  fraudulent 
pretensions  to  government  authority,  which  seem  to  have 
imposed  on  the  people.  Now  it  so  happened  that  Mr.  John 
Hall,  of  Otterburn,  "  mad  Jack  Hall "  as  he  was  called,  who 
was  himself  "  crimped,"  according  to  his  defence  at  his  trial 
by  the  Jacobites  of  the  'fifteen,  became  the  fortuitous  agent 
in  putting  an  end  to  these  persecutions.  For  it  so  fell  out 
that  he  had  made  an  appointment  with  a  young  man,  in  his 
employ,  to  meet  him  at  the  fair,  and  on  reaching  the  ground 
was  surprised  to  see  his  servant  being  led  away  by  a  horseman 
whom  he  recognized  as  a  Widdrington.  Hastening  up  he 
demanded  an  immediate  explanation  ;  the  serving  man  was 
obviously  in  a  state  of  nervous  bewilderment,  while  the  other 
blustered  and  declared  that  the  youth  was  in  his  keeping,  and 
that  he  should  be  accountable  for  him  to  no  one  but  the 
queen.  Even  Hall,  noted  for  his  fiery  temper,  seems  to  have 
been  under  the  spell  of  these  scoundrels,  for  he  appears  to 
have  tried  a  course  of  persuasion  and  even  entreaty  before 
resorting  to  more  effective  means.  This  at  length  failing  as 
well  as  his  short  temper,  he  drew  his  horse  across  the  road 
and  refused  to  let  Widdrington  pass  till  he  showed  his 
credentials.  Upon  this  the  other  drew  his  sword  and,  holding 


208     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

it  towards  the  choleric  J.P.,  exclaimed,  "This  is  my  com- 
mission." "Then  we  will  test  its  truth,"  replied  Hall, 
descending  from  his  horse,  throwing  off  his  cloak  and  drawing 
his  basket-hilted  sword.  The  other  had  no  choice  but  to 
follow  suit,  and  was,  moreover,  a  fine  swordsman.  After  a 
long  and  furious  encounter,  Widdrington's  weapon  was  struck 
from  his  hand  and  his  life  lay  in  that  of  Hall.  The  latter 
granted  him  so  much,  but  a  crowd  in  the  mean  time  collecting, 
he  was  so  roughly  treated  that  the  squire's  generosity  seemed 
likely  to  prove  unavailing.  The  miscreant,  however,  did 
escape  with  his  life,  but  there  was  no  more  slave  crimping 
in  Northumberland.  Poor  Mr.  Hall,  who  was  accounted  a 
cheerful  and  kind-hearted,  if  heady,  person,  seems  to  have 
experienced  through  life  the  rubs  of  fortune.  His  house  at 
Otterburn  was  accidentally  destroyed  by  fire.  Soon  after- 
wards an  extraordinary  flood  on  the  Redewater  washed  away 
his  crops  and  stock,  visitations  interpreted  by  the  common 
people  as  evidence  of  Divine  wrath  in  that  he  had  not  pre- 
vented the  famous  duel,  mentioned  in  an  earlier  chapter, 
which  resulted  in  the  death  of  Ferdinando  Forster  and  the 
hanging  of  Fenwick  ;  a  negative  offence  surely  for  the  time 
and  country.  Lastly,  as  already  hinted,  he  was  drawn  into 
the  'fifteen  affair  against  his  will,  but  selected  nevertheless  as 
one  of  the  victims  of  royal  vengeance,  and  after  being  five 
times  reprieved,  he  was  hung  at  Tyburn. 

We  were  now  out  upon  the  line  of  the  Roman  wall  running 
parallel  with  the  Tyne,  and  just  here,  some  four  miles  to  the 
north  of  it,  to  Newcastle.  Throughout  this  whole  section  of 
twenty-five  odd  miles  the  masonry  has  practically  disappeared 
into  the  solid  metal,  with  which  General  Wade  created  his 
famous  but  know  little-used  road  from  Newcastle  to  Carlisle. 
The  occasion  of  this  was  the  salutary  lesson  of  the  'forty-five 
when  it  was  found  impossible  to  move  troops  across  to  the 
defence  of  the  Cumbrian  capital.  It  is  a  solitary  highway, 
even  hereabouts,  running  westward  on  the  line  of  the  wall  to 
the  North  Tyne,  with  the  precision  that  distinguishes  its 
whole  course,  though  not  actually  grass-grown  as  sometimes 


CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD  209 

in  its  wilder  stages  beyond  the  aforesaid  river.  We  had  left 
the  fatter  uplands  behind  us  at  Stagshaw  bank,  as  we  set  our 
faces  along  the  military  road  toward  the  Great  Roman  Camp 
of  Chesters  in  the  deep  valley  of  the  North  Tyne,  five  miles 
ahead.  The  country  around  was  neither  moorland  nor  waste 
land.  Indeed,  I  dare  say  it  was  worth  a  pound  an  acre,  but  it 
was  lonely  and  sparsely  fenced,  which  was  well,  for  the  skies 
were  sad  and  the  wind  sighed  in  the  great  ash  trees  that  turn 
many  a  bleak  Northumbrian  road,  for  brief  and  welcome 
snatches,  into  a  stately  avenue.  Nor  anywhere  have  I  seen 
the  ash  flourish  and  thrive  as  it  does  in  Northumberland.  It 
has  no  great  qualities  of  leaf  in  spring-time,  like  the  beech 
and  the  sycamore,  and  is  sometimes  provokingly  tardy.  It 
has  no  autumn  splendour  to  speak  of,  nor  has  the  sycamore, 
that  glory  of  the  first  summer  woods  and  the  first  sport  of 
autumn  winds,  any  at  all ;  a  natural  enough  sequence,  as  the 
leaf-bearing  period  of  most  deciduous  trees  is  much  the  same  if 
measured  from  the  moment  of  their  budding.  Late  to  start, 
though  in  this  notoriously  capricious,  tenacious  of  its  summer 
colouring  so  long  as  it  can  hold  its  leaves,  the  ash  will  time 
and  again  bring  back  the  mocking  memories  of  June  above 
one's  head,  even  when  October  is  wearing  fast  away,  and  the 
mountains  white,  perhaps,  with  an  early  snowstorm.  Often- 
times in  Wales  and  the  North  have  I  seen  quite  deep  snow 
gleaming  through  the  leaves  of  large  ash  trees  still  in  full 
summer  dress,  though  the  green  be  a  dull,  frost-bitten  green 
to  be  sure,  and  the  leaves  hanging  limp,  to  be  swept  bare  in 
one  night  by  a  single  storm.  For  no  tree  disrobes  more  pre- 
cipitately nor  flaunts  for  a  briefer  or  more  uncertain  interval 
that  delicate  saffron  which  so  well  becomes  it.  But  for 
myself,  in  full  summer  I  like  nothing  better  in  the  way  of 
timber  than  these  great  ash  trees  by  the  road  side  with  their 
twinkling  leaves,  that  whisper  so  mysteriously  in  the  faintest 
airs  and  toss  and  stream  so  wildly  in  a  gale. 

There  are  not  many  of  them,  nor,  indeed,  of  any  trees, 
along  the  iine  of  the  Roman  Wall.  Indeed,  one  would  wish 
no  timber  here.  The  very  spirit  of  the  wall  is  against  the 


210     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

stir  of  woods  or  clamour  of  harvest-fields.  We  were  not  yet, 
to  be  sure,  in  its  really  wild  section,  but  Wade's  road  on  top 
of  it,  with  the  Vallum  close  at  hand  on  the  left,  and  its  own 
fosse  on  the  right,  strode  away  over  sufficiently  bare  ridges 
ahead  of  us,  while  to  the  north  we  overlooked  a  third  of  mid- 
Northumberland.  Neither  true  moorland,  nor  yet  a  region 
chained  and  bridled  to  any  appreciable  extent  by  fences, 
spread  out  before  us.  Hedges  of  the  ragged  Northumbrian 
sort  flapped  here  and  there  their  tops  in  the  wind,  while  it 
whistled  cheerily  through  their  bare  poles  beneath.  But  the 
general  effect  was  a  mighty  vista  of  open  country,  of  shadowy 
greys  and  greens,  patched  about  irregularly  with  dark  clumps 
or  belts  of  woodland.  A  distant  manor,  a  homestead,  or  a 
group  of  cottages,  showed  at  wide  intervals,  or  what  seemed 
to  us  so.  There  were  both  highways  and  byways,  beyond 
any  doubt,  coursing  through  and  about  it,  though  you  might 
well  fancy  it  easy  to  mount  a  horse  and  ride  over  pastures 
for  a  dozen  miles  without  let  or  hindrance.  It  was  only  on 
a  closer  scrutiny  one  realized  that  the  ordinary  obstacles  of 
civilization  were  all  there,  if  widely  stretched  out.  There 
was  nothing  here,  at  least,  approaching  the  trim  or  the  rect- 
angular ;  one  might  almost  be  overlooking,  though  Heaven 
forgive  me  for  the  comparison,  some  great  stretch  of  sparsely 
wooded,  thinly  settled,  rolling  prairie  such  as  you  may  see  in 
the  Canadian  north-west.  Much  more  appropriately,  one 
might  fancy  it  the  old  half-derelict  Northumberland  of  the 
raiding  days,  refusing  even  in  these  times  of  peace  and  plenty 
to  be  trammelled  with  overmuch  enclosure,  and  reduced  to 
the  appearance  of  a  chessboard.  If  a  claim  to  some  working 
acquaintance  with  the  landscape  of  almost  every  county  in 
England  and  Wales  be  not  accounted  an  immodest  one,  I 
should  like  to  record  that  I  know  no  one  that,  as  a  whole, 
could  be  in  any  way  likened  to  Northumberland.  And  in 
this  connection  I  have  no  futile  order  of  physical  merit  in 
my  mind,  nor  if  I  had  could  I  possibly  give  Northumberland 
the  first  place,  high  one  though  it  merits.  Striking  as  it  all 
is,  no  portion  of  it  has  any  exact  counterpart  elsewhere.  But 


CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD  211 

there  are  large  regions — roughly  speaking,  the  middle  regions 
— that  offer  a  type  of  scenery  differing  from  any  known  to 
me ;  not  field  for  field,  nor  even,  perhaps,  mile  for  mile,  but 
in  a  general  survey  as  a  characteristic  whole.  Space  and 
distance  for  one  thing  are  so  continuously  about  your  path  ; 
you  are  never  anywhere  cramped.  However  conventional 
the  immediate  foreground,  the  wild  seems  always  calling 
somewhere  within  sight,  and  often  bursts  upon  you  unawares 
at  the  very  next  fence.  That  the  county  has  a  note  of  its 
own  above  most  single  counties  there  is,  I  think,  no  question 
even  in  a  purely  physical  aspect,  though  it  is  next  to  impos- 
sible to  divest  Northumbrian  soil,  even  for  a  moment,  of  the 
glamour  of  its  past,  and  regard  it  from  the  point  of  view,  let 
us  say,  of  a  landscape  painter.  There  is  a  frequent  note,  too, 
of  sadness  and  pathos  in  the  scenery  ;  but  that  is,  of  course, 
purely  physical.  It  is  not  the  pathos  of  Ireland,  where 
centuries  of  unmitigated  depression  seem  reflected  on  the 
face  of  a  country  adapted  by  Nature  to  the  harbouring  of 
such  memories ;  nor,  again,  the  more  detached  and  less 
poignant  pathos  of  Wales,  where  the  echoes  of  an  heroic, 
but  hopeless,  unequal  racial  struggle  of  no  modern  practical 
significance  are  recorded  in  the  names  of  hills  and  fields. 
No  wail  of  bards  comes  along  the  Northumbrian  dales.  The 
Border  ballad  stirs  altogether  different  chords  within  one. 
Rivers  of  blood  have  been  poured  out  in  old  Northumbria 
with  greater  suffering  probably  from  torch  and  spear  to  the 
square  mile  than  ever  lacerated  even  Wales  or  Ireland.  But, 
then,  if  one  may  speak  in  metaphor,  the  Northumbrians  liked 
it.  A  thousand  widows  and  orphans  may  have  wept  and 
starved,  but,  then,  a  thousand  other  widows  and  orphans 
across  the  Tweed  would  sooner  or  later  do  the  same  thing, 
and  accounts  be  squared.  Neither  the  one  nor  the  other  in 
historical  sense  have  ever  regarded  themselves  but  as  com- 
munities, who  for  several  centuries  engaged  in  a  prolonged 
and  voluntary  entertainment  of  the  most  sanguinary  nature, 
at  the  memory  of  which  in  the  abstract  they  are  both  rather 
pleased  than  otherwise,  particularly  as  they  left  off  quits,  and 


THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

shook  hands  at  the  end  of  it.  Moreover,  being  of  the  same 
stock,  no  disturbing  note  of  racial  antipathy  is  present.  The 
romantic  flavour  of  Northumberland  is  boisterous,  racy, 
strenuous,  Homeric.  No  statistics  of  slaughter,  no  ghastly 
suffering,  can  make  it  otherwise,  however  the  gales  may  sigh 
and  however  sad  at  times  be  the  landscape.  The  shadow  of 
a  strong  man  armed  rides  everywhere  about  the  land,  and 
that  of  a  stout-hearted,  large-limbed  female  philosopher  sits 
in  the  pele  house  quite  ready,  if  need  be,  to  drive  the  cattle 
into  the  barmekyn,  pull  up  the  ladder  to  the  front  door,  and 
await  events  with  resignation.  The  West  Marches  have  been 
in  a  literary  sense  submerged  by  the  Lake  poets.  One  may 
venture  this  much,  I  trust,  without  sacrificing  one's  veneration 
to  those  gentle  genii  who  one  and  all  passed  through  life  on 
the  Border  apparently  untouched,  or  almost  untouched,  by 
its  spirit.  All  the  imagination  a  well-meaning  pilgrim  may 
bring  to  Cumberland  is  exhausted  at  Wordsworthian  shrines, 
and  he  never  reaches  the  fords  of  Solway,  nor  gets  on  the 
track  of  Kinmont  Willie,  nor  thinks  of  the  Grahams  of 
Netherby,  nor  often  recognizes  the  pele  towers  that  stand  so 
thick  about  the  edge  of  the  Lake  country,  and  some  actually 
within  it.  No  familiar  poets  in  the  past  but  Scott  have  sung 
of  the  Northumbrian  borderland.  The  names  of  Akenside 
and  Leyden,  both  more  or  less  natives,  mean  nothing  to  the 
southerner.  But  nameless  Northumbrians  have  contributed 
no  little  to  the  many  volumes  of  old  Border  minstrelsy, 
sonorous  and  racy,  with  the  clash  of  steel  and  the  ring  of 
galloping  hoofs,  with  lives  held  lightly,  and  of  quarter  neither 
asked  nor  given,  of  maidens  ready  to  leap  up  behind  their 
lovers,  and  stab  the  latter  or  themselves  should  the  venture 
prove  their  ruin.  Nothing  could  express  the  rude  passion  of 
a  Border  race  in  love  or  war  with  half  the  eloquence  of  their 
own  spirited  lays  in  their  own  racy  Saxon,  though  the  north 
side  of  the  Border  has  been  immeasurably  the  most  prolific. 
The  wail  of  the  dead  is  in  it,  to  be  sure,  often  enough,  but  it 
is  the  wail  foreshadowing  a  tolerably  assured  revenge.  The 
genius  of  later  Northumberland  has  found  its  chief  expression 


CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD      213 

along  the  lines  that  create  Stephensons  and  Armstrongs.  It 
has  not,  I  think,  run  much  to  verse  or  even  prose.  A  faint 
reflection  perhaps  of  the  old  Border  poetry,  attuned  to  gentle 
themes,  may  be  traced  in  a  small  company  of  old-time  fox- 
hunters  and  anglers  who  have  invoked  the  streams  and  hills 
of  their  affections  in  verse  that  at  least  comes  from  the  heart, 
and  stirs  the  sympathetic  soul  in  good  Northumbrian  Doric. 
I  have  seen  somewhere  quite  a  little  volume  of  lays,  dedicated 
to  the  Coquet  alone,  which  for  the  feelings  expressed,  whether 
or  no  for  the  method  of  expression,  are  not  unworthy  of  that 
romantic  stream.  Of  higher  verse  known  to  readers  outside 
Northumberland  and  to  the  London  critics,  Mr.  Wilfred 
Gibson  is,  I  think,  the  only  native  singer  who  has  achieved 
a  place  among  the  younger  poets  of  to-day.  And  the  mention 
of  Coquet  reminds  me  that  our  horizon  here  was  bounded  by 
the  bold  outlines  of  Simonside  and  the  mountain  heights 
through  which  that  impetuous  stream  runs  down  to  Rothbury 
from  the  wilds  of  Cheviot. 

A  lonely  inn,  built  of  stone  hewn  at  the  expense  of 
Imperial  Rome,  a  blustering  shower  and  the  natural 
cravings  incidental  to  noonday,  conspired  somewhat  feli- 
citously to  our  refuge  in  a  deserted  stone-flagged  parlour, 
where,  on  an  oak  settle,  before  a  trestle  table,  we  discussed 
our  ale  and  bread  and  cheese,  while  the  storm  beat  on  the 
windows,  and  the  big  trees  above,  with  roots  sunk  deep  in 
buried  Roman  masonry,  tossed  and  moaned.  Silent  enough 
as  this  old  military  road  is  now,  when  better  ones  and  a 
railroad  follow  the  Tyne  to  Cumberland,  it  was  the  track 
frequented  in  former  days  by  the  Scotch  carriers,  whose  calling 
seems  to  have  been  an  important  and  sometimes  a  risky 
one.  Some  of  the  taverns  that  lived  on  their  custom  have 
long  hauled  down  their  sign.  This  one  exists,  perhaps,  by 
the  grace  of  Staghaw  Bank  fair,  declined  though  its  glories  be. 
All  the  way  from  Newcastle  hither,  Wade's  road  has  pursued 
its  steadfast  course  on  the  ruins  of  the  Roman  wall,  turning 
with  it  here  and  there  in  sharp  angles,  but  never  once 
wobbling  or  curving.  It  has  been  carried,  too,  as  the  Wall 


214     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

was  carried  for  its  own  obvious  purpose,  along  the  crests  of 
the  highest  ridges,  though  not  anywhere  are  these  to  be 
compared  to  the  crags  we  shall  find  it  climbing  later.  And 
in  close  company  with  both  these  tracks  travels  that  Vallum 
or  turf  wall,  with  ramparts  and  fosse,  which  forms  so  ever- 
green a  subject  of  contention  among  experts  and  antiquaries. 
Nowhere  during  the  whole  route  of  twenty-five  miles,  from 
the  coast  to  the  passage  of  the  North  Tyne,  does  this 
mysterious  dyke  depart  a  long  stone's  throw  from  its  neigh- 
bour. The  conflicting  theories  as  to  its  origin  and  import 
will,  doubtless,  crop  up,  in  another  chapter,  when  we  face  the 
other  great  Roman  work  in  its  most  perfect  and  most  in- 
spiring section.  Hunnums,  or  Halton  Chesters,  the  camp 
just  passed  at  Staghaw  Bank,  is  the  fourth  great  station  from 
Wallsend,  counting  that  of  Pons  ^Elii,  buried  in  the  hurly- 
burly  of  Newcastle.  At  some  of  these  and  at  other  points 
there  are  yet  remains  of  interest.  But  this  section  would 
not  often  be  included  in  anything  but  a  purely  antiquarian 
pilgrimage,  as  it  bears  no  comparison  in  interest  to  the  more 
westerly  one  across  the  North  Tyne,  to  which  the  merely 
intelligent  layman  quite  rightly  devotes  himself.  Not  far 
from  our  inn  we  crossed  the  Watling  street,  on  its  way  to 
that;  other  northern  wall  of  turf,  between  the  Forth  and 
Clyde,  which  was  to  prove  that  the  ambition  of  Imperial 
Rome  had  at  last  overleaped  its  powers.  A  little  later  we 
passed  beside  the  site  of  Heavenfield,  that  mighty  con- 
flict between  Oswald  and  the  Celts,  spoken  of  in  an  earlier 
chapter,  when  Oswald's  army,  as  the  story  goes,  became 
converts  and  conquerors  on  the  same  day.  We  turned  aside, 
too,  across  country  to  the  northward,  to  look  at  the  massive 
isolated  pele  tower  of  Cocklaw,  which  still  keeps  grim 
guard  over  a  homestead  in  a  wide  flat,  and  makes  a  brave 
show  from  the  surrounding  hills,  and  after  this  we  were  soon 
upon  the  banks  of  the  North  Tyne  at  Chollerford,  six  miles 
above  Hexham  and  five  above  the  confluence  of  the  two  lusty 
and  formidable  streams.  They  are,  in  truth,  a  powerful  pair 
of  twins.  But  this  northern  one  holds  the  fancy  more  on  all 


CORBRIDGE  TO  CHOLLERFORD  215 

accounts.  It  is  a  trifle  larger  for  one  thing,  and  as  full  in 
volume  as  the  Welsh  Dee  or  Usk  in  their  maturity.  It  runs 
dark  in  a  flood,  with  the  rich  flavour  of  a  thousand  peat 
mosses,  while  the  other,  though  differing  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  its  birth  or  origin,  comes  down  in  storm-time  of  a 
muddier  hue.  The  South  Tyne  may  be  said  to  form  the 
third  and  the  least  of  the  great  raiding  valleys,  but  it  opens 
no  direct  path  to  Scotland,  as  flowing  from  the  west  and 
rising  on  the  edge  of  Cumberland.  But  the  North  Tyne,  like 
the  Rede,  has  its  fountain  springs  on  the  Scottish  side  of  the 
line,  and  these  were  the  two  main  arteries  down  which  the 
foray  went  and  came.  On  the  wild  banks,  too,  of  either,  and 
up  the  burns  that  feed  them,  lived  the  wildest  and  most 
lawless  of  the  Border  clans  or  greynes.  No  other  valleys  on 
the  English  March — and  the  Rede  is  a  tributary  of  the  North 
Tyne — are  so  steeped  in  foraying  and  moss-trooping  story  for 
the  whole  of  their  respective  courses,  and  that  of  the  North 
Tyne  is  some  thirty  miles  long. 

No  valley  anywhere  has  a  river  more  worthy  to  chaunt  the 
refrain  of  such  a  stirring  and  romantic  past.  Dark,  clean- 
bottomed,  rapid,  and  full  volumed ;  stirred  at  short  notice  into 
angry  flood,  channelled  with  rocks  and  pent  betimes  into 
narrow  wooded  gorges,  it  is  altogether  a  river  to  be  held  in 
high  regard.  The  Romans  fashioned  a  statue,  probably 
many  statues,  but  one  remains,  after  their  conception  of  its 
deity,  a  powerful,  bearded,  truculent  Vulcan-looking  type  of 
being.  The  salmon,  when  they  come  to  the  parting  of  the 
ways  above  Hexham,  bright  and  beautiful  a  stream  in  fine 
weather  though  the  South  Tyne  be,  choose  the  nobler  path 
in  a  majority  of  perhaps  twenty  to  one.  This  was  my  first 
acquaintance  with  it,  and  we  stood  over  the  central  one  of  the 
seven  massive  arches  that  carry  the  road  across  it  at  Choller- 
ford,  and  watched  the  porter-coloured  water  running  eight  or 
ten  feet  deep  beneath  us,  and  just  here  some  eighty  yards  in 
width,  for  it  was  a  falling  flood.  Just  below  the  bridge  the 
river  broke  into  a  wide  burst  of  rapids  spreading  around  a 
woody  island  or  two,  and  hurrying  on  to  where  the  great 


216     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Roman  station  of  Chesters  or  Cilurnum  dips  to  the  very 
flood  mark  of  the  stream.  For  to  the  east  of  the  river, 
V^ade's  road  swerved  from  the  wall  to  meet  the  modern 
bridge.  The  old  Roman  bridge,  fragments  of  which  may  yet 
be  seen  in  the  bed  of  the  river,  crossed  it  half  a  mile  below 
and  landed  the  traveller  of  those  days  at  the  very  doors  of 
the  chief  officer's  sumptuous  villa,  which  has  now,  with  its 
rooms,  its  passages,  and  elaborate  baths,  been  opened  to  the 
day.  It  was  not  on  this  occasion,  however,  that  I  made 
acquaintance  with  Chesters,  for  it  is  not  a  thing  to  be 
undertaken  in  the  course  of  a  fifteen  or  twenty-mile  walk. 
It  demands  a  day,  at  least,  to  itself,  and  even  this  will  per- 
chance only  stimulate  the  visitor  to  return  again. 

It  was  at  Chollerford,  moreover,  that  Hobbie  Noble  cut  the 
tree  by  which  he  rescued  Jock  o'  the  Side  from  Newcastle 
jail,  and  it  was  at  Chollerford,  on  his  return  to  Liddesdale 
from  that  immortal  exploit,  that  he  swam  the  swollen  Tyne 
with  his  chained  and  fettered  friend  upon  his  back,  while  the 
baffled  sheriff  raged  upon  the  hither  shore.  It  is  a  pleasant 
walk  from  here  to  Hexham  of  some  seven  miles,  five  of  them 
by  leafy  lanes  lifted  above  the  river  which  churns  far  below 
in  deep  rocky  channels  between  well-timbered  meadows  and 
fringes  of  pendant  woods.  At  Warden,  near  the  confluence, 
there  is  a  well-kept  church  with  a  plain  tower  partly  of  Saxon 
work,  and  it  is  worth  while  getting  down  to  the  river  bank 
here,  for  its  bed  is  broken  everywhere  with  great  boulders  that 
lash  its  waters  into  a  hundred  moods.  It  is  hemmed  in,  more- 
over, with  fantastic  walls  and  slabs  of  limestone,  and  thickly 
overhung  with  woods.  Upon  the  whole,  the  last  effort  of  this 
noble  river  is  not  surpassed  for  beauty  on  its  whole  course, 
and  of  this  last  I  was  privileged  a  little  later  to  prosecute 
an  acquaintance  that  only  ceased  amid  the  solitudes  of  the 
Scottish  border,  where,  with  a  foot  on  each  side,  I  dipped  the 
cup  of  my  flask  into  its  infant  streams. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  ROMAN  WALL 

I  CONFESS  to  approaching  the  subject  of  the  Roman  wall 
in  these  pages  with  no  slight  misgiving.  When  I  think 
upon  the  sages  who  have  spent  much  of  their  lives  in  con- 
structing all  that  we  may  know  of  its  story  by  patient  exca- 
vation, by  thought  and  labour,  and  left  us  such  a  legacy  of 
illuminating  matter,  I  feel  that  an  apology  is  almost  due 
from  a  light-hearted  amateur  proposing  to  tread  in  their 
steps  and  cull  briefly  from  their  ample  store.  I  take  some 
heart,  however,  in  the  thought  that  a  mere  infinitesimal 
fraction  of  even  the  more  enlightened  public  outside  the 
Border  country  have  ever  followed  its  mysterious  trail,  and 
that  only  a  larger  fraction  have  any  dim  conception  of  what 
it  really  amounts  to.  So  one  may  venture  to  hope  that  the 
impression  of  a  layman,  whose  eyes  have  been  recently 
opened,  may  serve  at  least  as  an  elementary  introduction  to 
what  is,  I  think,  fairly  regarded  as  far  and  away  the  most 
impressive  reminder  of  Roman  Briton  in  these  islands,  and 
certainly  the  most  fascinating  scene  of  Roman  occupation 
remaining  in  evidence.  I  have  seen  Bath  and  Uriconium, 
Cardiff,  Caerleon,  and  Pevensey,  as  well  as  various  lesser 
remains  of  the  Roman  period,  including  that  wonderful  little 
Roman  villa  that  has  braved  the  centuries  above  ground  on 
the  coast  of  Cumberland,  at  Ravenglass.  But  I  cannot  think 
that  the  most  successful  excavation  of  a  single  station,  how- 
ever large,  can  touch  the  imagination  with  quite  the  same 
force  as  these  toiling  leagues  of  upstanding  wall  and  its 
measured  line  of  fortresses. 

217 


218     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

The  impressive  solitude  of  the  region  through  which 
much  of  it  pursues  its  undeviating  path,  the  rugged  pre- 
cipitous and  lonely  heights  whose  crests  it  scales  in  its  un- 
swerving journey  from  sea  to  sea  are,  beyond  doubt,  partly 
responsible  for  the  sway  it  wields  over  every  one,  with  a  head 
to  think  or  a  heart  to  feel,  who  has  visited  it. 

Lying  back  on  the  crest  of  the  lofty  hill,  along  whose 
eastern  and  southern  base  the  two  Tynes  run  to  their  con- 
fluence, is  a  well-defined  British  camp.  But  I  could  not  help 
feeling  after  climbing  up  there  one  cloudless  morning  and 
enjoying  a  prospect  up  the  North  and  South  Tyne  into  Scot- 
land and  Cumberland  respectively,  how  vague  and  elusive 
were  the  thoughts  aroused  by  the  crude,  grassy  earthwork 
within  whose  circle  I  stood,  compared  to  the  eloquence  of 
that  other  rampart  but  a  few  miles  beyond ;  yet  it  was  more 
than  possible  they  were  practically  of  the  same  age.  Environ- 
ment after  all  has  a  good  deal  to  say  in  these  matters  unless 
you  have  definitely  committed  yourself  to  the  pursuit  of 
primitive  man,  and,  like  an  acquaintance  of  mine,  keep  a 
mind  sedulously  blank  to  every  historic  occurrence  subse- 
quent to  the  final  lodgment  of  the  Romans.  As  an  amateur 
I  had  spent  a  recent  summer  in  Wiltshire  in  constant  com- 
pany with  the  prehistoric  Briton,  and  found  his  society  highly 
stimulating.  But  there  he  is  in  sole  and  conspicuous  occupa- 
tion of  the  soil,  and  has  no  shadow  of  a  rival.  In  Wales, 
also,  he  is  very  much  alive.  In  Northumberland,  too,  his 
traces  are  thick  enough,  and  give  the  serious  antiquary  an 
ample  field  for  such  leisure  as  the  insistant  Roman  may 
leave  him.  But  somehow  he  does  not  touch  me  here  as 
elsewhere.  The  intrenched  camp,  the  trackway,  the  round  hut, 
the  tumulus,  the  monolith,  seem  to  pale  in  interest  before  the 
infinitely  more  eloquent  remains  in  this  wild  corner  of  the 
masters  of  the  world  who  could  have  told  us  all  about  these 
other  primitive  things  and  their  import  in  polished  prose,  if 
they  had  thought  them  worth  their  notice. 

I  may  be  less  than  just  to  my  compatriots  in  assuming  so 
large  a  measure  of  vagueness  concerning  the  wall.  One  may 


THE   ROMAN  WALL  219 

only  judge,  of  course,  within  the  limits  of  one's  experience. 
For  myself  I  had  in  past  times  been  more  than  once  so 
nearly  within  its  atmosphere,  and  to  my  shame  stopped  just 
short  of  it,  as  to  gather  something  of  its  significance  and  to 
feel  for  years  an  uneasy  restlessness  at  any  mention  of  it, 
and  a  sense  of  lost  opportunities  unsustained  by  any  definite 
prospect  of  recovering  them.  As  to  what  extent  the  wall 
may  be  an  object  of  pilgrimage,  I  can  only  say  that  some 
half  a  dozen  days  scattered  through  the  month  of  August, 
the  saturnalia  of  the  tourist,  found  us  on  or  about  that 
notable  six  or  eight  mile  section,  to  which  the  visitor  naturally 
and  for  the  best  of  reasons  resorts,  and  we  met  in  all  just 
eight  persons. 

The  station  of  Chesters,  or  Cilurnum,  which  we  have  just 
passed  at  Chollerford  upon  the  North  Tyne,  may  be  accounted 
with  sufficient  accuracy  the  eastern  limit  of  the  western,  or 
more  perfect  and  altogether  more  inspiring,  half  of  the 
Northumbrian  wall.  You  may,  if  you  choose,  go  thither  from 
Hexham  by  the  North  British  Railway,  which  threads  the 
windings  of  the  North  Tyne  and  eventually  climbs  its  distant 
watershed  into  Scotland  with  a  single  line.  About  four  times 
a  day  the  locomotive  startles  the  shades  of  the  raiders,  and 
gladdens  no  doubt  the  ears  of  their  descendants  with  its  brief 
commotion.  Chollerford  station  is  about  ten  minutes'  walk 
from  the  camp  of  Chesters,  which  lies  in  the  park  of  a  country 
house  owned  by  the  Clayton  family.  The  late  Mr.  Clayton 
was  an  accomplished  and  ardent  antiquary.  The  excavations 
here  are  mainly  due  to  his  initiative  and  supervision,  and, 
what  is  more,  he  erected  a  large  museum  at  his  lodge  gate, 
wherein  a  very  fine  collection  of  Roman  treasures  from  all  the 
stations  on  or  about  the  wall  is  carefully  arranged  and  tabu- 
lated. Lastly,  both  camp  and  museum  are  thrown  open  to 
the  public  one  day  in  the  week.  If  the  fastnesses  of  the  wall 
itself  and  its  elevated  western  stations  are  apparently  so  little 
heeded  by  an  incurious  public,  Mr.  Clayton's  laudable  work  by 
the  river-side  at  Chesters  seems,  at  any  rate,  fully  appreciated. 
An  average  perhaps  of  fifty  persons  may  assemble  here  every 


220     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Thursday ;  pilgrims  mainly  from  the  outer  world,  an  intel- 
ligent and  interested  company  as  I  saw  them  for  the  most 
part.  But  Chesters  can  be  seen  without  any  trouble  or  with- 
out missing  a  single  square  meal.  The  other  stations  and 
the  wall  itself  demand  a  good  deal  of  exertion,  and  admit 
only  of  such  food  and  drink  as  you  can  carry  in  you  pocket. 
Regarded  simply  as  a  camp,  however,  Chesters  is  technically 
the  most  interesting,  as  it  is  the  largest  and  most  elaborately 
excavated,  while  the  museum  is  in  itself  an  incalculable 
attraction. 

It  seems  inevitable,  when  face  to  face  with  such  a  hazy 
period,  that  something  should  be  said  of  the  main  events 
which  led  to  the  building  of  what  is  usually  known  as  Hadrian's 
Wall.  Julius  Caesar,  it  will  be  remembered,  only  paid  a  flying 
visit  of  about  three  weeks  to  Britain,  some  half  a  century 
previous  to  the  Christian  era.  Then  came  a  long  silence, 
broken  only  by  the  casual  allusion  of  contemporary  Latin 
authors  to  our  island  as  inhospitable,  barbarous,  and  uncon- 
quered.  Nearly  a  hundred  years  after  Caesar's  brief  and 
rather  rough  experience,  and  forty-three  after  Christ,  the 
Emperor  Claudius,  not,  it  is  said,  without  native  encourage- 
ment, determined  to  win  name  and  fame  in  the  Ultima  Thule 
of  the  West  So  in  A.D.  43  Aulus  Plautius,  his  lieutenant, 
landed  in  South  Britain  with  the  first  instalment  of  the  con- 
quering host,  some  fifty  thousand  men,  who  had  raised, 
however,  among  themselves  many  objections  to  serving  in 
a  country  "  outside  the  world."  Next  year  the  emperor  had 
to  come  himself,  and, pushing  his  conquests  as  far  as  Colchester, 
received  in  Rome  the  coveted  Triumph  and  the  surname  of 
Britannicus.  Aulus  Plautius  continued  the  work  with  the  future 
Emperor  Vespasian  as  second  in  command,  and  after  much 
hard  fighting,  brought  the  south  of  the  island  into  subjection. 
He  was  succeeded  by  Ostorius  Scapula,  a  name  familiar 
enough  to  those  who  have  followed  the  camp-strewn  track 
of  the  brave  Silurians  under  Caractacus  along  the  Marches 
of  South  Wales.  In  the  ensuing  reign  of  Nero  came  the 
great  revolt  in  south-east  Britain  under  Boadicea,  when 


THE   ROMAN  WALL  221 

London  and  St.  Albans  were  sacked  amid  tremendous 
slaughter.  Suetonius  was  the  governor  to  whom  fell  the 
ruthless  task  of  retribution,  which  was  achieved  in  the  death, 
we  are  told,  of  eighty  thousand  Britons.  The  conquered  south 
lay  apparently  stunned,  and  the  conquerors  being  doubtless 
out  of  breath,  it  was  reserved  for  Vespasian,  thirty  years  after 
the  first  settlement,  to  commence  fresh  operations.  His 
lieutenants  in  five  years  subdued  the  Brigantes  in  the  north, 
and  succeeded  better,  at  least,  than  Ostorius  against  the 
heroic  Silurians.  Then  arose  the  most  vigorous  and  suc- 
cessful soldier  of  them  all,  Agricola,  who  had  already  the 
experience  of  many  years'  service  in  the  island.  Tacitus,  his 
son-in-law,  relates  his  triumphs  in  war,  his  statesmanlike  and 
conciliatory  methods  in  peace.  His  first  autumn  he  subdued 
the  North  Welsh  and  the  sacred  isle  of  Mona.  The  second 
year  he  cemented  the  conquests  already  made  by  stations  and 
garrisons,  at  the  same  time  educating  the  chieftains  in  polite 
usages  and  teaching  the  natives  generally  the  art  of  war,  of 
erecting  buildings,  and,  what  is  more,  of  how  to  live  in  them. 
In  short,  he  sowed  the  seeds  of  a  liking  for  inactivity,  luxury, 
and  ease,  which  was  to  save  the  conquerors  many  battles. 
Next  year  Agricola  carried  his  arms  to  the  Tay  and  secured 
the  country  behind  by  a  chain  of  forts  from  the  Firth  to  the 
Clyde.  When  in  seven  years  he  had  done  with  Britain  he 
was  fighting  only  around  the  edge  of  what  we  now  call  the 
Scottish  Highlands,  the  rest  of  the  island  being  terrorized 
into  peace. 

His  successors  during  the  next  thirty  odd  years  lost  head- 
way so  much,  and  experienced  so  many  revolts,  that  the 
Emperor  Hadrian  came  in  person  to  the  island.  Though  his 
operations  were  successful  it  was  Hadrian  who,  at  least,  in- 
augurated the  policy  that  the  chain  of  forts  which  Agricola 
had,  it  is  supposed,  placed  also  across  this  lower  neck,  as  well 
as  across  the  shorter  isthmus  between  Forth  and  Clyde,  should 
be  the  limit  of  Roman  dominion.  It  was  Hadrian  who  till 
recently  has  been  generally  regarded  as  the  builder,  about 
A.D.  121,  of  the  wall  that  we  see  here  now,  and  that,  together 


222     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

with  its  stations,  remained,  speaking  broadly,  the  northern 
frontier  of  Roman  Britain  and  of  the  Roman  Empire  for  three 
hundred  years.  And  now  I  am  at  the  perilous  edge  of  a  net- 
work of  controversy  that  ribald  individuals,  devoid  of  the  bump 
of  reverence,  or  any  obligations  towards  accuracy,  would  tell 
you  has  made  breaches  in  families  and  alienated  from  one 
another  ancient  friends.  This  is  what  the  Border  Philistine 
in  his  lighter  moments  will  freely  assert.  These  are  not  as 
the  controversies  of  the  neolithic  and  eolithic  enthusiast,  so 
obviously  indefinite  as  almost  to  preclude  any  ground  for 
serious  tension.  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  hint  at  any- 
thing of  this  kind,  embittering  those  haunts  of  ancient  peace 
where  Northumbrian  antiquaries  foregather.  It  would  be  both 
impertinent  and  libellous  to  echo  the  jests  of  the  grouse- 
shooting,  or  fox-hunting,  or  coal-mining,  or  sheep-breeding 
Philistine,  which  are  licensed.  As  I  have  said,  this  is  not  like 
a  pre-historic  controversy  ;  there  is  ample  documentary  testi- 
mony in  Roman  and  early  British  writers  as  to  the  building 
of  the  wall,  but  it  all  just  stops  short  at  the  actual  builder  of 
the  stone  one  now  extant,  and  leaves  two  great  men,  Hadrian 
and  Severus,  with  nearly  a  century  between  them,  as  mute 
but  rival  claimants.  It  would  be  preposterous  in  these  pages 
to  involve  the  reader  in  even  a  summary  of  the  evidence  pro- 
duced in  favour  of  either  of  these  theories,  or  to  quote  the 
extracts  from  a  dozen  Roman  writers,  besides  the  allusions  to 
the  wall  by  the  British  historians,  Nennius,  Gildas,  and  Bede, 
interesting  as  it  all  is  to  those  who  are  concerned  with  the 
subject,  and  well  worthy  of  perusal.  Such  controversies  affect 
no  wit,  but  only  give  further  interest  to  the  great  main  facts, 
namely,  that  the  wall  before  us  was  built  not  later  than  the 
early  part  of  the  third  century,  and,  at  least,  two  hundred 
years  before  the  departure  of  the  Romans,  and  that  the 
stations  are  mostly,  if  not  all,  a  century  older.  A  word  or  two 
may  be  permitted  as  to  the  main  difficulties  of  more  positive 
definition.  Every  one  agrees  that  two  walls  were  built,  the 
other  one  connecting  the  Forth  and  Clyde  with  a  length  of 
sixty-three  miles.  The  Latin  authors,  with  one  or  two 


THE  ROMAN  WALL  223 

exceptions,  give  no  clue  as  to  which  they  are  alluding.  The 
northern  wall,  the  stations  upon  which  are  identified  and  have 
produced  a  good  deal  to  the  excavator,  is  known  to  have  been 
built  of  sods,  not  only  from  its  contemporary  description  as 
a  "  vallum,"  a  term  opposed  to  the  idea  of  masonry,  but  still 
more  from  the  traces  left  by  it  The  term  "  murus  "  is  held 
to  mean  especially  a  stone  wall.  It  is  usually  applied,  but 
not  always,  to  the  Northumbrian  wall.  The  question  is  a 
burning  one,  whether  Hadrian  did  not  built  his  wall  of  sods, 
clamped  together,  as  we  are  told,  these  turf  walls  were  with 
huge  stakes,  to  be  replaced  in  the  next  century  by  Severus 
with  the  stone  wall  we  now  see.  If  I  record  here  the  fact 
that  ^Elius  Spartianus,  the  historian  of  the  Emperor  Hadrian, 
distinctly  states  that  the  latter  "was  the  first  to  draw  a 
murum  of  eighty  thousand  paces  to  divide  the  Barbarians 
from  the  Romans,"  the  reader  might  assume  that  this  settles 
the  question,  and  demand  to  what  purpose  all  this  palaver. 
But  he  would  be  wrong,  and  if  he  followed  the  further 
evidence  of  the  experts,  some  of  whom,  I  think,  would  almost 
give  some  years  of  life  to  be  quite  sure  of  the  same,  he  would 
find  them  holding  poor  ^Elius  in  less  esteem  than  they  would 
like  to.  He  would  find  them  confronted  with  the  fact  that 
"  murus  "  is  used,  though  perhaps  in  mere  carelessness,  by  an 
almost  contemporary  historian  in  regard  to  the  northern  wall, 
which  we  know  was  sod.  This  last  we  may  dispose  of  with 
the  statement  that  it  is  credited  to  Lollius  Urbicus,  chief  in 
command  of  the  Emperor  Antoninus  Pius  about  the  year 
140  A.D.,  also  that  it  proved,  as  every  one  vaguely  knows, 
a  failure,  though  precisely  how  much  of  a  failure  even  the 
wisest  do  not  know. 

In  regard,  however,  to  this  living  wall,  the  question  may  be 
thus  briefly  summarized.  In  1840  Severus  was  universally 
credited  with  it  by  antiquaries.  In  the  same  year  Mr. 
Hodgson,  the  eminent  historian  of  Northumberland,  pub- 
lished the  fact  and  the  reason  for  it,  that  he  had  slowly  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  Wall,  with  its  turrets  and  many  of 
the  stations  on  it,  were  planned  and  executed  by  Hadrian. 


THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Mr.  Bruce,  the  most  eminent  and  voluminous  of  past  authori- 
ties on  the  wall,  together  with  Mr.  John  Clayton,  agreed 
with  Mr.  Hodgson,  and  the  Hadrian  theory  held  the  field, 
and  practically  renamed  the  wall,  which  had  been  called  after 
Severus  since  earlier  times,  when  it  had  been  known  as  the 
Kepe  or  Picts'  Wall. 

Now,  however,  though  a  stimulating  and  healthy  partisan- 
ship exists  on  this  and  minor  matters,  there  is  a  prevalent 
disposition  to  regard  the  question  with  an  open  mind.  One 
word  more,  if  the  reader  will  bear  with  me,  anent  a  salient 
feature  that  has  been  the  cause,  and  doubtless  always  will  be, 
of  endless  controversy  and  much  mystery.  This  is  the 
Vallum,  which  I  spoke  of  in  the  last  chapter,  as  clinging  to 
the  course  of  the  wall,  and  scarcely  ever  more  than  a  bow- 
shot distant  from  it  throughout  its  whole  length.  The 
technical  peculiarities  of  its  construction,  which  are  a  subject 
of  some  perplexity,  do  not  matter  for  the  moment.  To  the 
ordinary  eye,  it  resembles  one  of  those  dykes  or  depressions 
with  a  bank  on  either  side — double  on  one  side  in  this  case — 
that  one  associates  with  ancient  British  work.  Some  think  it 
was  a  part  of  the  scheme  that  planned  the  wall  and  the  later 
camps,  and  was  intended  as  a  defence  against  an  attack  from 
the  south  by  the  subjected  tribes.  Others  agree  with  the 
first  part  of  the  theory,  but  regard  the  Vallum  as  having,  in 
the  first  instance,  at  any  rate,  been  constructed  simply  as  a 
road  from  camp  to  camp.  The  theory  that  it  preceded  the 
stonewall  as  a  barrier  against  the  North  is  untenable,  seeing  that 
for  much  of  the  way  it  lies  on  a  southern  slope,  and  is  com- 
manded from  above.  Some  believe  it  to  be  merely  an  ancient 
boundary  line,  such  as  the  Wansdyke  in  Wiltshire,  elaborated 
and  utilized  for  the  purpose  of  transport  or  defence,  possibly 
both,  by  the  Romans.  At  any  rate,  it  has  earned  the  epithet 
of  the  inscrutable,  and  is  a  continual  source  of  entertainment 
to  the  archaeologist. 

Now,  there  is  an  important  Roman  document  extant 
known  as  the  "Notitia  Dignitatum,"  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses an  imperial  army  and  civil  list.  In  this  are  set  forth, 


THE  ROMAN   WALL  225 

under  the  heading  "  along  the  Vallum,"  not  only  the  list  of 
all  stations  on  the  wall,  but  the  personelle  of  their  respective 
garrisons,  which  last  appear  to  have  been  more  or  less 
permanent.  This  list  is  further  corroborated,  if  such  were 
necessary,  by  the  numerous  tablets  and  altars  found  in  each 
station,  with  the  name  of  the  corps  quartered  there.  Chesters, 
or  Cilurnum,  for  instance,  as  guarding  the  bridge  over  the 
river  and  being  convenient  for  watering  horses,  was  a 
cavalry  station  and  the  quarters  of  the  second  ala  of  the 
Astures.  It  appears  as  the  sixth  station  from  the  east  in  the 
Notitia,  and  is  thus  entered  "  Profectus  Ales  Secundce  Asturum 
Cilurno"  while  Hunnums  was  also  held  by  a  cavalry  garrison, 
and  in  like  manner  tabulated  "The  Prefect  of  the  Savinian 
Ala  at  Hunnums."  Six  of  the  twenty-three  stations  were 
occupied  by  cavalry,  and  an  ala  consisted  of  five  hundred  men. 
Such  natural  shelter  as  could  be  looked  for  upon  the  wall 
from  the  fierce  blasts  of  the  north  certainly  existed  at 
Chesters,  a  small  mercy  for  which  these  troopers  from 
Southern  Spain  were,  let  us  hope,  duly  thankful. 

Chesters  is  the  second  largest  station  on  the  wall,  Birdos- 
wald,  in  Cumberland,  ranking  first.  It  is  of  oblong  shape, 
and  five  acres  in  extent,  and  pushes  its  north  end  some 
seventy  yards  past  the  line  of  the  wall.  Much  excavation 
has  been  done  here.  Mr.  Clayton  began  it  about  1840,  and 
the  veteran  who  now  shows  one  round  was  practically 
engaged  in  this  work  under  his  master  only  twenty  years 
later,  and  with  his  own  hands  has  helped  to  recover  or  expose 
the  greater  part  of  what  one  now  sees. 

The  station  had  six  gates,  one  of  which  still  retains  on 
excavation  the  usual  rectangular  towers  and  guardroom  on 
either  side.  Here  there  is  a  pillar  in  the  middle,  on  each 
side  of  which  were  double  gates,  closing  in  the  middle  against 
a  stone  curb  and  turning  on  an  iron  pivot  that  worked  in  a 
stone  cup.  In  these  stations,  or  small  military  towns,  the 
forum  and  market  seemed  to  have  been  combined  in  one 
central  enclosure.  This  has  been  laid  open  at  Chesters, 
exposing  three  gateways,  with  the  marks  of  wheels  on  the 
Q 


226     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

stone  sill  of  the  easterly  one,  showing  that  market  produce 
was  brought  hither  in  carts.  The  bases  of  the  pillars,  which 
carried  a  colonnade  round  three  sides  of  an  open  court,  are 
still  in  situ,  and  three  large  rooms  have  been  exposed,  which 
are  thought  to  have  been  used  for  official  purposes.  My 
accomplished,  and  now  venerable,  guide  discovered  the  well 
himself  about  fifteen  years  ago.  The  Praetorium,  the  quarters 
of  the  station  commander,  were  exposed  by  Mr.  Clayton  in 
1843,  with  a  flight  of  steps  leading  into  various  apartments, 
in  one  of  which  he  found  the  red  cement  still  lining  a  bath, 
and  in  the  flues  of  the  furnaces,  the  soot  was  as  fresh  as  if 
produced  by  fires  lighted  the  day  before.  In  these  chambers 
he  found  a  bronze  fibula,  now  in  the  museum,  and  among 
other  things,  including  coins  from  Hadrian  to  Gratian's  time, 
a  signet  ring,  displaying  a  cock  pecking  at  an  ear  of  wheat. 
Here,  too,  was  found  the  statue  of  the  river  god  already 
alluded  to. 

Other  interesting  portions  are  the  barracks  and  part  of  a 
street,  with  several  small  chambers  opening  out  of  it,  and  the 
bases  of  columns  that  supported  a  colonnade,  showing  them 
to  have  been  shops.  The  foundations  of  the  south  gateway 
have  also  been  laid  bare,  and  are  much  as  the  other  one,  and, 
indeed,  as  most  of  them  on  these  stations,  having  two  entrances 
separated,  in  this  case  by  a  wall,  with  an  archway  through  it. 
Here  the  remains  of  one  of  the  wooden  gateposts  were 
actually  found  adhering  to  the  iron  pin,  which  was  fast  in  the 
stone  pivots.  In  one  of  the  guard-houses  of  this  gate  was  a 
stone  inscribed  "  The  Sixth  Legion  the  Victorious  "  (Leg. 
VI.  V.  I.).  In  all  the  world  could  there  be  any  elaborate 
inscription  more  moving  in  its  significant  brevity  than  those 
seven  letters  emerging  from  the  sod  upon  the  banks  of  the 
Tyne,  and  choked  with  this  remote  Northumbrian  soil! 
Among  the  treasures  gathered  from  Cilurnum,  nothing  is 
rated  higher  than  two  portions  of  a  bronze  tablet  which  were 
found  among  the  dtbris  of  the  guardroom  to  the  south  gate 
by  Mr.  Tailford,  our  guide.  These  are  now  in  the  British 
Museum,  and  belong  to  a  class  of  tablet  found  elsewhere  in 


THE  ROMAN  WALL  227 

Britain,  and  known  as  military  diplomas.  They  seem  to 
have  been  issued  by  Vespasian  and  Hadrian,  and  are,  in 
short,  certificates  of  good  conduct  to  discharged  soldiers, 
carrying  the  rights  of  Roman  citizenship  and  the  right  to 
marry.  This  one  contains  twenty  lines  of  lettering.  It 
begins  with  the  name  and  titles  of  the  Emperor,  Caesar  Titus 
JEtius  Hadrianus  Antoninus  Augustus  Pius,  the  father  of  his 
country,  and  goes  on  to  say  that  the  cavalry  soldiers  in  three 
alae  'and  eleven  cohorts,  who  had  completed  twenty-five 
campaigns  and  obtained  an  honourable  discharge,  shall  have 
the  rights  of  Roman  citizenship  and  also  of  marriage  with 
the  wives  whom  they  have  when  citizenship  is  granted  them, 
and  in  cases  of  unmarried  men,  with  such  wives  as  they 
may  hereafter  take,  provided  that  each  man  takes  one  wife 
only.  A  list  of  the  three  alae  and  eleven  cohorts  is  also 
written  upon  the  tablet.  The  only  fragment  missing  contains 
the  date,  which  is  readily  fixed  by  the  allusions  to  Antoninus 
Pius  at  146  A.D. 

On  the  water  side  of  the  station,  which  stands  some  fifty 
feet  above  the  river,  is  perhaps  the  most  interesting  of  all 
the  excavated  buildings  to  the  ordinary  eye,  and  is  thought  to 
have  been  the  private  residence  of  the  commanding  officer. 
This  displays  a  courtyard  thirty-five  feet  by  thirty  feet,  faced 
by  a  wall  containing  seven  alcoves  within  rounded  arches, 
some  three  feet  high,  and  in  perfect  preservation.  They  are 
thought  to  have  been  connected  with  the  bath,  of  which  there 
are  obvious  remains,  as  well  as  portions  of  the  pipes  and 
cisterns  for  retaining  water  and  carrying  it  to  and  from  the 
river,  a  hundred  yards  away.  Some  of  the  hypocausts  are 
extant,  while  adjacent  to  the  courtyard  are  four  or  five 
chambers.  Beneath  a  curious  splayed  window  in  one  of 
them,  Dr.  Bruce  found  some  fragments  of  broken  glass.  In 
clearing  out  another,  thirty-three  human  skeletons,  with  those 
of  two  horses  and  a  dog,  were  found,  probably  the  relics  of 
some  successful  inrush  of  the  Barbarians,  for  we  know  that 
the  wall  with  its  stations  was  overleaped  by  the  northern 
hordes  many  times  in  the  three  centuries  of  its  existence. 


228     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Dr.  Bruce,  writing  more  than  half  a  century  ago,  also  believes 
that  he  discovered  among  the  peasantry  oral  traditions  of 
the  Roman  occupation.  One  catches  one's  breath  for  a 
moment  at  this.  But,  after  all,  the  traces  of  a  still  remoter 
paganism,  such  as  the  midsummer  fires,  flourished  within  the 
memory  of  living  people  in  many  districts.  When  a  particu- 
lar staircase  was  opened  at  Cilurnum  in  1843,  the  country 
people,  says  Dr.  Bruce,  were  persuaded  that  a  large  under- 
ground stable  holding  five  hundred  horses  would  be  revealed. 
It  is  at  least  significant  that  five  hundred  was  the  exact  com- 
plement of  an  ala.  He  quotes  some  other  local  superstitions 
along  the  wall,  which  may  or  may  not  be  regarded  as  absurd. 
The  Romans,  for  instance,  were  supposed  to  have  been  abnorm- 
ally lazy  in  time  of  security,  and  accustomed  to  bask  in  a  state 
of  torpor  under  the  southern  side  of  the  wall,  and  the  Picts, 
it  was  affirmed,  used  to  creep  up  unawares,  and  letting  down 
grappling  hooks,  haul  these  unsuspecting  warriors  over  the 
wall  by  their  clothes.  A  tradition  survived,  also,  that  the 
Romans  had  extravagantly  broad  feet  and  wore  still  broader 
shoes,  and  that  when  it  rained  they  lay  on  their  backs  with 
their  feet  in  the  air,  finding  in  this  fantastic  method  a  service- 
able protection  from  the  weather.  Another  is  that  the  stones 
for  building  the  wall  were  conveyed  from  the  quarry  by  a 
long  line  of  men  passing  them  from  hand  to  hand.  I  found 
a  similar  tradition  still  alive,  and  probably  a  sound  one,  even 
among  the  school-children,  regarding  the  Norman  castle  of 
Clun  on  the  Welsh  march,  the  particular  quarry  there  being  two 
miles  distant.  Another  wall  tradition  is  that  a  flue  ran  along 
inside  the  masonry,  and  was  used  as  a  speaking  trumpet  from 
post  to  post.  In  Dr.  Bruce's  day,  too,  there  was  a  local 
legend  that  the  Picts  once  drove  the  Romans  from  the  wall 
and  stations,  and  that  the  latter,  while  marching  seaward, 
with  the  intention  of  leaving  the  country,  met  a  seer,  who 
pronounced  the  gloomy  alternative  for  them  of  being  drowned 
if  they  took  ship,  or  slain  if  they  retraced  their  steps.  Thus 
embarrassed  they  marched  for  Wales,  where  the  Roman  breed, 
pure  and  unadulterated,  was  to  be  found  to  this  day.  Dr. 


THE   ROMAN  WALL  229 

Bruce  wonders  if  this  could  be  in  any  way  traced  to  the 
march  of  the  XXth  Legion  from  the  wall  to  Caerleon.  No, 
indeed !  This  in  my  humble  opinion  is  worth  all  the  other 
traditions  put  together.  For  in  the  fifth  century,  the  period 
of  the  official  severance  from  Rome,  when  the  Romanized 
Britons  were  trying  to  hold  the  wall,  the  sons  of  Cunedda,  a 
chieftain  of  Strathclyde,  were  among  those  responsible  for  its 
defence.  Every  Welshman  knows  how  at  length,  giving  up 
the  struggle  against  the  Pictish  and  Scottish  hordes,  still 
further  intensified  by  the  commencement  of  the  Saxon 
pressure  from  the  east,  the  family  of  Cunedda  headed  a  great 
immigration  from  the  north  and  south  of  the  wall,  upon  the 
western  side,  and  marched  to  Wales.  Here  they  possessed 
themselves  of,  or,  at  any  rate,  secured  predominance  over,  a 
large  slice  of  the  country.  They  were,  in  a  sense,  the  founders 
of  the  old  social  system,  and  the  begetters  of  much  of 
the  ancient  aristocracy  of  Wales,  who  were  in  turn,  and  in 
part  only,  displaced  by  the  Normans.  Merioneth,  Cardigan, 
and  other  districts  owe  their  name  to  the  various  sons  of 
Cunedda.  Theoretically  the  old  land-owning  families  of 
much  of  Wales  to-day  are  regarded  as  the  representatives 
of  the  conquering  cast  introduced  by  the  sons  and  followers 
of  the  old  chief  who  reigned  at  Carlisle,  on  the  western  end  of 
the  wall. 

Dr.  Bruce  evidently  did  not  concern  himself  with  the 
tangled  maze  of  Welsh  history,  or  know  anything  of  the 
Cunedda  movement.  The  tradition  gathered  by  him  becomes 
therefore  all  the  more  significant  and  valuable,  in  that  it  did 
not  jump  to  any  part  of  the  great  subject  he  has  made  his 
own,  or  offer  any  temptation  to  him  to  meet  it,  so  to  speak, 
halfway. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  Roman  bridge  across  the  North 
Tyne  at  Chesters,  the  remains  of  which  are  plain  enough  in 
the  normal  summer  condition  of  the  river.  This  bridge, 
which  was  built  by  Severus,  took  the  place  of  an  earlier  one 
that  is  thought  to  have  ante-dated  the  wall.  Indeed,  the 
remains  of  both  are  there,  the  distinction  between  them 


230     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

being,    I    believe,   quite   unmistakable   to  those  who  have 
probed  the  matter. 

The  museum  at  Chesters,  interesting  enough  in  any  case,  is 
yet  more  so  after  making  acquaintance  with  the  wall  itself 
and  the  site  of  its  chief  stations.    Here  you  have  contemporary 
portraits  in  stone  of  the  kind  of  men  who  held  the  north-west 
frontier  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  crested  helmet,  the  tunic, 
the  sword  and  belt,  the  spear  and  embossed  shield.     You 
find,  too,  their  diverse,   somewhat    unexacting  deities  com- 
memorated on  every  side.     Here,  for  instance,  five  feet  in 
height,  is  the  headless  figure  of  Cybele,  daughter  of  the  earth 
and  sky,  and  mother  of  the  gods,  standing  on  a  prostrate 
bull,  the  emblem  of  agriculture.    Altars  to  Jove,  "greatest 
and  best,"  are,  of  course,  numerous.    Others  are  dedicated  by 
Spanish  horsemen,  Batavian  or  German  foot-soldiers  or  com- 
manders to  gods  that  have  no  place,  I  am  quite  sure,  in  any 
classical  dictionary.     Many  of  these  altars,  too,  as  well  as 
tablets,  are  simply  inscribed,  "  To  the  old  gods ; "  whether  this 
suggests  some  reaction  against  the  many  obscurer  and  local 
deities  that  the  dedicators  had  tried  and  found  wanting  in 
North  Britain,  one  may  not  know.     From  the  next  station  of 
Procolitia  come  yet  more  altars  and  bronze  tablets,  not  merely 
inscribed  to  the  goddess  Coventina,  but  in  two  instances 
carrying  a  figure  of  that  lady  herself  in  bold  relief.     The 
prefect  of  the  first  cohort  of  the  Batavians  himself  is  respon- 
sible, about  the  year  A.D.  150,  for  one  such  to  the  popular, 
local  goddess  nymph,  who  reclines  on  a  water-lily,  holding  a 
vessel  in  her  left  hand  and  a  plant  in  her  right.     Here,  again, 
the  local  god  of  the  camp  of  Borcovicus,  where  we  shall  shortly 
be,   Silvanus  Coelius   is   invoked  by   Valerius,   a   Tungrian 
soldier.    The  XXth  Legion,  with  its  motto,   Valeria  victrix, 
and  its  crest,  the  running  boar,  is  constantly  in  evidence  on 
tablets  and  altars.     The  completion  of  public  works,  too,  is 
commemorated  in  the  same  imperishable  fashion,  with  the 
name  of  the  regiment  employed,  and  that  of  its  commander, 
and  sometimes  that  of  the  reigning  emperors.     The  Vlth 
Legion  Victrix,  pia  fideles,  was  engaged  in  the  construction 


THE  ROMAN  WALL  231 

of  the  wall,  and  there  is  a  stone  here  inscribed  with  the 
number  of  paces  accomplished  by  a  centuria  of  its  ninth 
cohort.  Here,  again,  is  a  tablet  to  a  standard-bearer,  whose 
figure  is  sculptured  on  it  in  high  relief.  The  standard,  shod 
with  a  triple  prong  and  surmounted  by  a  bull,  is  grasped  in 
his  right  hand,  while  close  by  is  a  sepulchral  stone  to 
Longinus,  the  trumpeter  of  the  first  cohort  of  the  Batavians. 
Near  these,  again,  is  one  to  a  lady,  Amelia  Comindus,  age 
thirty-three,  dedicated  to  her  memory  .by  her  husband, 
Nobilianus,  who  was  quartered  at  Procolitia.  This  seems 
to  have  been  used  badly  by  the  officers  of  a  much  later 
garrison,  for  it  was  found  doing  duty  as  the  paving  slab  of 
a  hypocaust,  laid  face  downwards  on  pillars  in  a  villa  out- 
side Procolitia,  and  its  surface  blackened  with  smoke.  Mars 
Thingsus  seems  to  have  been  a  popular  god  of  the  German 
cohort  at  Borcovicus,  and  there  are  many  portraits  of  him 
and  many  votive  altars  and  tablets  in  his  honour.  There 
are  numbers,  too,  of  centurial  tablets,  with  the  names  of  the 
respective  captains,  one  of  which  bears  the  familiar  and 
wholly  appropriate  one  of  "Balbus."  Tablets  erected  by 
wives  to  their  husbands  are,  of  course,  as  common  as  the 
reverse  in  all  Roman  camps,  and  in  one,  Cornelius  Victor,  a 
standard-bearer  of  infantry,  with  twenty-six  years'  service  and 
fifty-five  years  eleven  days  of  life,  is  thus  honoured  by  his 
widow.  The  reigning  emperors,  one  need  hardly  say,  are 
commemorated  on  all  sides.  A  common  form  of  dedication, 
too,  is  that  to  the  "  genius  of  the  camp,"  or  the  "  cohort,"  and 
there  is  here  an  altar  "  to  the  genius  of  the  faithful  first 
cohort  of  the  Vardulli,"  which  appears  to  have  been,  according 
to  the  inscription,  an  exceptionally  crack  cavalry  corps  a 
thousand  strong,  consisting  entirely  of  Roman  citizens  under 
the  command  of  Antitus  Adventus,  the  Imperial  envoy  and 
propraetor. 

There  are  several  milestones,  and  what  a  fine  conception 
the  Roman  had  of  their  dignity  !  Compare  the  curt  lettering 
of  a  county  council  milestone,  particularly  in  this  very 
district  of  Northumberland,  where  the  first  three  letters  of  a 


place-name,  quite  enigmatical  to  the  stranger,  are  sometimes 
considered  sufficient,  with  the  following  expanded,  as  archae- 
ologists have  it,  "Imperatori  Caesari  Marcoavrello  Severe 
Alexandro  Pio  felici  Augusto  Pontefici  Maxim  Tribunitae 
potestates  Consuli  patri  patriae  curante  Claudio  Xenophon 
Te  legato  Augusti  Pro-Prsetore  a  Petrianis  Millia  passuum 
XVIII  " — and  this  I  select  at  haphazard. 

As  to  the  large  collection  of  milestones,  gold,  jet,  and 
bronze  ornaments,  rings,  fibulae,  broaches,  statuettes,  coins, 
Samianware,  terra-cotta,  and  glass  vessels,  iron  implements, 
bits,  stirrups,  weapons,  and  other  things  innumerable,  such 
may  be  seen  in  duplicate  in  greater  profusion,  of  course,  and 
in  spots  more  accessible  and  more  frequented  than  on  these 
remote  banks  of  the  North  Tyne,  whose  undisturbed  pastures 
gave  them  up  to  us.  But  to  me,  at  least,  on  this  quiet,  far- 
away frontier  of  Imperial  Rome  they  seem  far  more  eloquent 
of  their  mysterious  epoch  than  when  stored  amid  the  smoke 
of  cities  and  the  roar  of  traffic. 

But  we  have  not  yet  touched  the  wall  itself,  in  its  still 
extant  section,  that  is  to  say.  For  any  one  with  only  a 
reasonable  measure  of  antiquarian  fire  within  him,  a  three  or 
four  days'  walk  along  its  entire  length  from  Newcastle  to 
Carlisle  would  be  a  profitable  and  pleasant  enterprise.  But 
as  there  are  all  sorts  of  other  things  and  other  districts  to 
gossip  about  in  these  pages,  I  would  take  the  reader  at  once 
to  what,  from  every  point  of  view,  is  the  most  complete  and 
inspiring  portion  of  it.  This  will  be  reached  from  Chollerford, 
by  pursuing  Wade's  upland  road,  westward,  through  a 
country  growing  gradually  wilder,  to  the  neighbourhood  of 
"  Sewingshields,"  a  high,  craggy  summit  over  which  the  wall, 
already  a  very  obvious  fact,  boldly  strides.  Halfway  here 
we  shall  have  left  behind  us  close  to  the  road  the  station 
of  Crawburgh  or  Procolota,  and  crossed  the  burn  so  sacred  to 
the  Dutch  soldiers'  water  goddess  Coventina,  its  presiding 
genius.  Here,  too,  the  road  at  length  ceases  its  prolonged 
and  vandal  dance  upon  the  traces  of  the  wall,  for  the  latter 
now  leaps  away  towards  that  adventurous  rugged  journey  of 


THE   ROMAN   WALL  233 

a  dozen  miles,  where  no  modern  road  dare  follow  it,  leaving 
that  of  General  Wade  to  pursue  a  parallel  course  in  the  bleak 
vale  below.  Nothing  could  be  more  striking  or  clearly 
defined,  or,  indeed,  more  finely  exhibited  to  the  eye  from  any 
high  point  of  the  ridge  it  traverses  than  this  passage  of  the 
Roman  wall  through  the  wilderness.  From  this  high  crag  of 
Sewingshields,  as  good  a  point  as  any  to  take  up  with  it,  the 
whole  lie  of  the  country  on  either  side  can  be  read  like  a  map. 
Parallel  with  the  outstanding  line  of  the  wall,  and  some 
four  miles  to  the  southward,  is  the  valley  of  the  South  Tyne, 
and  between  us  the  back  of  the  high  ridge  beyond  which  it 
flows.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  next  one  to  that  carrying  the  wall 
and  on  which  we  are  standing.  It  has  left  such  scanty  traces 
of  luxuriance  as  it  possesses  on  its  southern  slope  to  look  down 
on  the  river  villages  of  Haydon  Bridge,  Bardon  Mill,  and 
Haltwhistle.  On  this  north  side  it  is  sometimes  heathery 
moorland,  but  mostly  bleak  pasture,  laced  with  stone  walls 
and  bank  fences,  and,  thinly  sprinkled  with  grim  little  home- 
steads of  stone  planted  on  or  near  Wade's  road,  which  again 
waves  forward  like  a  ribbon  along  the  treeless  vale  between. 
Still  lightly  fenced,  but  as  it  rises  to  the  wall  shaking  off  for 
the  most  part  all  trammels  of  turf  or  stone  dyke  ;  this  second 
ridge  from  the  Tyne,  that  for  centuries  was  the  outer  rampart 
of  Imperial  Rome,  suddenly  breaks  and  falls  abruptly  into  the 
plain  below  over  precipitous  whinstone  cliffs.  Along  the  brink 
of  these  escarpments,  which  rise  and  fall  for  miles  between 
altitudes  of  eight  and  thirteen  hundred  feet,  you  can  see,  from 
the  one  on  which  we  are  now  standing,  the  dark  thick  line  of 
the  renowned  Murus  urging  forward  its  unswerving  course. 
The  spectacle,  too,  is  the  more  impressive  from  the  solitudes 
that  spread  beneath  it  to  the  northward,  for  here  is  no  com- 
promise whatever  with  civilization.  As  far  as  the  eye  can  see, 
and  that  is  just  so  far  as  the  state  of  the  atmosphere  will  per- 
mit, stretches  an  undulating  solitude,  as  profound  in  every 
essential  as  when  the  shivering  sentinels  of  the  Roman  watch- 
towers  scanned  it  for  the  irrepressible  barbarian,  and  this  far- 
extended  garrison  had  probably  little  rest.  Intimidation  was 


234     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

not  enough  for  the  hardy  Picts  of  the  north  ;  they  had  to  be 
constantly  encountered,  and  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  from 
Tacitus  and  other  writers  that  they  broke  over  the  wall,  over- 
whelmed the  camps  and  garrisons,  and  ravaged  the  country 
of  the  Romanized  Britons  behind  on  several  occasions,  at 
points,  at  any  rate,  if  not  simultaneously  along  the  whole 
frontier.  That  so  many  soldiers  served  twenty-five  campaigns 
here  seems  of  itself  sufficient  testimony  to  the  Pictish  spirit. 
We  are  told,  too,  that  for  such  punishment  as  the  latter 
received  in  summer  they  made  up  for  in  winter  by  the 
annoyance  they  caused.  How  the  Spaniards  and  Italians 
relished  watching  and  fighting  on  this  very  storm  centre  of 
the  inclement  north,  one  may  well  wonder.  No  doubt  in 
time  they  got  acclimatized.  Indeed,  they  had  to,  as  they 
probably  spent  most  of  their  lives  here. 

If  there  were  no  wall  and  no  Romans,  this  wonderful 
whinstone  ridge  would  alone  be  a  feature  worth  coming  to 
see.  It  might  well  seem  as  if  one  of  the  natural  ridges  of 
these  uplands  had  been  split  in  the  centre  and  sheared  off 
with  some  blunt-edged  instrument,  which  shaved  it  down  for 
stretches  of  a  mile  or  so  and  then  left  it  alone  to  dip  to  the 
wilderness  in  the  normal  way.  I  am  not  going  to  follow  here 
piece  by  piece  the  structural  details  and  present  conditions  of 
the  wall  westward  along  the  summit  of  these  bare,  green 
crests  and  frowning  cliffs.  It  will  be  enough  that  it  is  now 
for  some  miles  continuously  extant,  and  generally  about  six 
feet  high,  with  a  breadth  of  but  little  less.  For  much  of  the 
time  its  summit  affords  the  easiest,  as  it  certainly  does  the 
most  interesting  footway,  unless  there  be  a  boisterous  wind 
or  heavy  rain  showers.  We  were  favoured  with  both  on  two 
of  the  four  or  five  days  I  was  privileged  to  spend  on  the  wall, 
and  I  would  not  have  had  it  otherwise.  For  striking  as  is 
the  range  of  vision  hence  on  a  clear,  sunny  day,  with  the 
Cheviots  in  the  far  north  and  Skiddaw  and  Crossfell  just 
showing  dim  beyond  the  heaped-up  moors  to  the  south, 
whence  issues  the  other  Tyne,  and  the  Solway,  again  gleam- 
ing far  away  towards  the  Irish  Sea,  the  genius  of  the  place 


THE   ROMAN  WALL  235 

seems  to  me  far  more  responsive  to  gloom  and  clouds,  to 
wind  and  storm.  On  each  occasion  that  I  followed  the  trail 
it  was  in  the  best  of  company,  native  born,  and  bred  up  in  a 
proper  regard  for  it,  and  none  of  us  had  any  difference  upon 
this  point  whatever,  so  we  took  our  soakings — for  you  don't 
get  merely  damp  on  the  wall — if  not  with  thankfulness,  at 
least  without  complaint. 

The  work  itself  is  faced  with  square  blocks,  mostly  free- 
stone, and  composed  within  of  rubble  and  whinstone,  into 
which  was  poured  that  liquid  mortar  which  has  made  Roman 
work  so  durable.  One  or  two  seventeenth-century  writers 
who  saw  the  wall  speak  of  it  as  twenty  feet  high.  Expert 
opinion,  based  on  many  existing  sources  for  forming  one, 
practically  agree  in  confirming  the  estimate  of  these  Elizabethan 
eye-witnesses.  Not  time,  but  man,  alas !  has  been  mainly 
active  in  destroying  what  would  have  been  a  monument 
indeed.  Every  farmhouse,  every  barn  and  cottage  within 
reach  of  the  wall  has  arisen  out  of  its  ruin,  and  it  is  only  in 
quite  recent  times  that  the  ravage  has  been  checked.  Mr. 
Clayton,  I  believe,  bought  every  bit  of  land  containing  portions 
of  the  work  that  was  purchasable,  and  thus  laid  posterity 
under  still  further  obligations. 

The  Roman  plan  for  its  defence  was  a  large  station,  of 
which  we  took  Chesters  as  a  leading  type,  about  every  fourth 
mile.  Between  these,  at  intervals  of  a  Roman  mile  (seven 
furlongs),  was  a  castella  about  sixty  feet  square,  built  against 
the  south  side  of  the  wall,  with  a  gate  opening  inwards,  and 
the  remains  of  several  of  these  are  happily  extant.  Between 
these  "mile-castles,"  again,  were  stone  towers,  mere  sentry- 
boxes  for  one  or  two  soldiers,  of  which,  I  believe,  there  are 
nowhere  any  traces.  A  mile  or  so  west  of  Sewingshields 
the  line  of  the  barrier  dips  to  a  spot  of  somewhat  sinister 
fame,  and  known  as  Busy  Gap.  It  was  a  pass  into  Hexham- 
shire  from  the  boundless  mosses  below,  which  stretched  away 
to  the  rieving  districts  of  the  North  Tyne  and  Rede,  and  was 
much  used  by  the  moss-troopers  and  cattle  thieves.  In  the 
desolate  moors  below  is  the  site  of  an  old  Border  castle, 


236     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

inhabited  less  than  a  century  ago,  and  celebrated  in  a  stanza 
by  Scot.  This  pass  had  such  evil  notoriety  that  the  term 
"  Busy  Gap  rogue  "  was  held  as  libellous  at  law  in  Newcastle. 
When  Camden  came  to  see  the  wall  from  Carlisle,  with  Sir 
Robert  Cotton,  though  they  were  consumed  with  curiosity 
they  dare  not  advance  further  than  Carvoran,  in  Cumber- 
land. "  From  thence  it  goeth  forward  to  Busy  Gap,  a  place 
infamous  for  thieving  and  robbery,  but  I  could  not  with  safety 
take  the  full  survey  of  it  for  the  rank  robbers  there  about." 

The  station  of  Housteads,  or  Borcovicus,  covers  a  green- 
hill  top,  750  feet  above  sea  level,  on  whose  southern  slope 
a  small  farmhouse  amid  a  grove  of  trees  strikes  a  cheerful 
note  amid  most  austere  surroundings.  Housteads  is  only 
three  miles  from  Bardon  Mill,  the  second  railway  station 
west  of  Hexham,  on  the  Carlisle  line,  and  it  is  a  pleasant 
walk  up  there  from  the  valley  of  the  South  Tyne,  crossing 
in  the  course  of  it  a  bold  ridge,  purple  at  this  time  with 
heather  bloom.  Borcovicus,  as  we  have  already  seen,  has 
been  prolific  in  its  contributions  to  our  knowledge,  such  as  it 
is,  of  Roman  life  on  the  wall,  and  was  occupied,  it  may  be 
remembered,  by  a  cohort  of  Tungrian  Infantry,  a  thousand 
strong,  German  settlers  originally  in  Belgian  Gaul.  We 
have  no  right  to  assume,  however,  that  nostalgia  prevailed 
among  these  aliens,  or  that  they  greatly  sighed  for  the  banks 
of  the  Meuse,  though  they  must  often  have  sighed  for  the 
summer.  Here,  at  any  rate,  they  doubtless  spent  most  of  their 
lives,  formed  alliances  more  or  less  regular  with  the  native 
women  of  the  communities  which  clustered  thickly  along  the 
south  side  of  the  barrier,  and  supplied,  or  helped  to  supply, 
the  needs  of  a  garrison  of  some  fifteen  thousand  men.  What 
is  now  one  of  the  most  thinly  populated  regions  in  all  England 
was  then,  beyond  doubt,  one  of  the  most  populous  and  active, 
for  a  hundred  thousand  souls  at  least  must  have  dwelt  con- 
tinuously along  this  sixty-mile  belt.  Nowhere  else  after  the 
time  of  Hadrian  were  the  Roman  arms  in  Britain  seriously 
engaged,  nor  was  there  any  other  frontier.  The  natives  else- 
where had  accepted  the  situation,  and  gradually  dropped  into 


THE  ROMAN  WALL  237 

a  peaceful  life  undisturbed  by  political  or  military  aspirations. 
But  north  of  the  wall  we  know  with  tolerable  certainty  that 
the  barbarian  neither  slumbered  nor  slept.  His  sword  did 
not  rust,  neither  did  his  muscles  relax,  as  the  civilized  Briton 
of  the  south  discovered  to  his  cost  when  he  was  left  alone  to 
man  these  northern  ramparts  and  face  him.  Here,  at  any 
rate,  for  three  centuries  there  was  life  and  stir  and  watchful- 
ness, fame  to  be  won,  promotion  to  be  earned.  One  must 
not  think  of  this  busy  frontier  as  remote  from  Imperial  notice 
because  it  was  geographically  remote  from  Rome,  and  has 
now  shrivelled  into  a  few  scanty  ruins  amid  a  lonely  waste. 
The  safety  of  a  great  and  wealthy  province  then  hung  upon 
it,  and  one  is  apt  to  forget  that  eight  or  ten  Roman  emperors 
spent  a  considerable  time  in  Britain  ;  that  one  was  born,  and 
that  two  died  here. 

Ships  from  France  or  the  Mediterranean  must  have  been 
continually  unloading  freights  at  one  or  both  ends  of  this 
frontier :  edibles  and  luxuries  and  works  of  art  from  the  far 
south.  Men,  too,  must  have  been  continually  going  back 
and  forth ;  officers  on  leave,  disbanded  soldiers,  or  recruits, 
British  youths  embarking  for  the  foreign  legions,  or  captured 
Picts  shipped  as  slaves.  The  security  of  the  wall,  though 
violated  on  occasions  during  three  centuries,  must  have 
seemed  quite  sufficient  for  the  average  Briton  of  that  day ; 
and,  no  doubt,  agriculture  under  the  stimulus  of  the  Roman 
eye,  and  of  a  market  into  which  specie  from  abroad  was 
regularly  poured,  flourished  no  little.  Disbanded  soldiers  of 
all  nations  must  have  settled  down  here,  too,  by  hundreds, 
with  British  wives.  And  what  has  become,  I  should  like  to 
know,  of  this  prodigious  infusion  of  southern  blood  into 
North  Britain  ?  The  Tungrians  and  Batavians  may  well  have 
only  introduced  an  earlier  Teutonic  strain  into  the  Celts,  who 
fought  afterwards  so  stoutly  against  Ida  and  other  Saxon 
intruder.  For  that  matter,  the  Picts  themselves  are 
suspected  of  Teutonic  blood,  though  the  Scots,  we  all  know, 
were  Celts  from  Ireland.  But  how  about  the  Spaniards,  and 
the  Moors,  who  for  two  centuries  at  any  rate,  and  probably 


238     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

three,  were  represented  on  an  average  by  perhaps  two 
thousand  males.  Whatever  happened,  they  must  have  shared 
the  fate  of  the  Celt  with  whom  they  merged  and  became, 
roughly  speaking,  a  Briton  of  Strathclyde.  In  this  case,  their 
descendants  must  have  marched  to  Wales  with  the  sons  of 
Cunedda.  Through  his  Strathclyde  ancestors,  then,  the 
modern  Welshman  might  quite  often  find  his  origin  in  a 
Tungrian  trooper  or  a  Moorish  standard-bearer ! 

Borcovicus  covers  five  acres,  and  is  on  the  usual  rectangular 
plan  with  its  northern  front  abutting  on  the  wall.  The  drop 
from  the  latter  into  the  waste  below,  known  as  the  forest  of 
Lowes,  is  just  here  sufficiently  steep,  but  a  hundred  yards 
further  westward  develops  into  a  sheer  precipice  of  basaltic 
crag  two  hundred  feet  in  height.  From  the  east  and  south 
gates  of  the  station,  too,  the  ground  slopes  downwards,  but 
more  gently,  terraced  and  broken  for  a  long  distance  where 
the  suburbs  of  the  town,  the  offices,  villas,  and  other  detached 
buildings  once  stood.  Within  its  four  walls,  the  camp  has 
been  at  various  periods  during  the  last  century  very  thoroughly 
excavated.  These  same  walls,  which  are  five  feet  thick,  as 
well  as  all  four  gateways,  are  entirely  exposed.  The  latter 
have  the  usual  towers  containing  guard  chambers  on  either 
side,  and  are  divided  in  the  middle  as  elsewhere,  forming  two 
entrances,  each  of  which  were  furnished  with  a  double  door 
closing  on  a  central  kerb  stone.  Their  narrowness  strikes 
one  at  once  as  indicating  the  small  gauge  of  the  Roman  carts 
and  chariots.  The  groves  in  the  sills,  made  by  the  countless 
wheels  that  passed  over  them,  strike  one  too,  but  on  a  deeper 
and  other  chord.  There  is  no  custodian  or  guide  up  here. 
Borcovicus  is  quite  in  the  wilds,  protected  only  against  the 
beasts  of  the  field,  while  the  long  grass,  matting  as  it  does 
knee-deep  between  the  crumbled  walls  and  streets,  entailed 
an  unavoidable  and  complete  soaking  on  each  of  our  visits. 
But  in  those  long  ages  before  modern  builders  made  their 
onslaught  upon  such  rare  quarries  of  dressed  stone,  many  a 
wild  beast,  many  a  moss-trooper  must  have  sought  refuge  in 
these  uncanny,  roofless  towns  upon  the  waste. 


THE   ROMAN   WALL  239 

I  am  not  going  round  Borcovicus  as  a  guide.  It  will  be 
enough  to  say  that  two  streets  bisect  the  station,  crossing 
each  other  near  the  remains  of  the  Forum  ;  that  the  founda- 
tions of  two  large  halls  are  exposed,  one  of  them  no  less  than 
a  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  length,  with  the  fragments  of 
circular  pillars  still  resting  in  situ  on  square  bases.  There 
are  the  remains,  too,  of  a  bath  and  hypocaust,  and  great 
numbers  of  smaller  chambers  constituting  the  soldiers' 
barracks.  Experts  say  that  there  are  distinct  traces  of  the 
station  having  been  captured  and  occupied  for  a  time  by  the 
barbarians,  and  then  reoccupied  by  the  Romans,  who 
restored  the  damage  without  clearing  away  the  inferior 
patching  of  the  Pict.  One  entry  of  the  two,  common  to  all 
the  gates  on  this  station,  as  in  others,  has  been  walled  up. 
This  is  attributed  to  the  period  of  waning  garrisons  and  the 
decline  of  confidence  preceding  the  withdrawal.  Numbers  of 
altars  and  tablets  have  been  recovered  here,  giving  evidence 
among  other  things  that  Mithras,  the  sungod  of  the  Persians, 
whose  worship  the  Romans  had  adopted  shortly  before  the 
Christian  era,  must  have  been  a  popular  deity,  perhaps 
because  he  showed  his  face  so  seldom.  For  at  a  point  some 
three  hundred  yards  south  of  the  camp,  and  within  the  traces 
of  its  suburbs,  a  walled-in  chamber  about  twelve  feet  square 
dedicated  to  this  god,  who  demanded  the  rites  of  human 
sacrifice,  was  discovered  in  1822.  Two  upright  altars,  in- 
scribed with  a  dedication  to  Mithras,  and  a  large  tablet 
illustrating  the  deity  himself,  surrounded  by  the  signs  of  the 
Zodiac,  were  found  standing  in  a  row  within,  and  several 
fragments  of  dedicatory  tablets  were  discovered  in  the  same 
chamber.  Another  god  in  higher  favour  with  this  Tungrian 
cohort,  as  before  mentioned,  was  Mars  Thingsus.  Several 
altars  in  his  honour  are  in  the  Chesters  Museum  as  well  as 
the  archway  of  a  temple,  in  the  corner  of  which  he  figures  in 
helmet  and  tunic  and  short  sword,  grasping  a  standard  and 
supported  by  a  goose.  A  nude  female  holding  a  wreath  is 
carved  on  either  side  or  curve  of  the  same  arch.  Traces, 
too,  of  an  amphitheatre  may  be  seen  just  below  this  camp, 


240     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

and  the  captive  Pict  must  have  made  an  admirable  gladiator. 
The  craving  to  know  something  of  the  life  of  these  garrisons 
becomes  intense  as  one  stands  amid  their  traces  at  once  so 
confidential  and  so  hopelessly  aloof;  above  all,  the  manner 
in  which  the  Roman  officers,  the  prefects,  and  centurions, 
their  wives  and  families  filled  in  their  time.  Were  the  ladies, 
who  put  up  memorial  tablets  to  their  husbands,  and  whose 
virtues  are  extolled  by  sorrowing  widowers  and  sons,  also 
women  of  the  world  ?  It  is  quite  certain  they  demanded 
many  of  the  luxuries  belonging  to  a  ruling  class.  But  of  what 
like  was  garrison  society,  with  all  the  traditions  of  a  southern 
clime,  in  this  windswept  mountain  ridge?  No  doubt  they 
hunted  in  such  a  country,  and  we  know  that  British  sporting 
dogs  were  quite  an  item  of  export.  They  must  assuredly,  too, 
have  interchanged  visits  with  the  neighbouring  stations, 
along  the  excellent  military  road,  the  traces  of  which  can  yet 
be  seen,  that  followed  the  wall,  while  the  temptation  to 
gossip  and  scandal  must  have  been  irresistible.  Perhaps 
they  did  a  little  lead  mining  in  the  valley  of  the  Tyne  close 
by.  The  officers,  however,  must  have  had  a  fair  amount  of 
routine  work,  drilling  recruits,  getting  supplies  through,  and 
administering  justice,  not  only  to  their  garrisons,  but  to  the 
neighbouring  farmers  and  peasants  who  were  under  their 
jurisdiction.  They  had  their  regimental  doctors  too,  for  a 
mural  tablet  to  the  "  Medicus  "  of  the  Tungrian  cohort  was 
dug  out  here,  and  may  be  seen  at  Chesters  as  well  .as  the 
scales  for  weighing  drugs. 

As  one  follows  the  wall,  now  some  seven  or  eight  courses 
in  height,  westward  from  here  it  disappears  for  a  few  hundred 
yards  in  a  narrow  belt  of  stunted,  wind-smitten  woodland, 
bristling  thickly  and  picturesquely  along  the  verge  of  a 
precipice,  which  is  buttressed  with  natural  platforms  and 
pillars  of  basaltic  rock,  a  more  effectual  defence  than  walls. 
Appearing  again  when  the  cliffs  give  way  to  steep,  grassy 
slopes,  the  wall  soon  brings  us  to  one  of  the  best  surviving 
specimens  of  a  mile  castle.  Though  its  three  sides,  enclosing 
a  square  of  some  sixty  feet  across,  are  only  from  four  to  six 


THE  ROMAN  WALL 

courses  high,  they  are  complete,  while   the  gateway  in  the 
south  wall  still  retains  the  lower  blocks  of  the  towers. 

More  than  one  ravine  bites  deeply  through  the  basalt 
ridge.  But  the  Roman  builders  cared  nothing  for  ravines, 
carrying  their  masonry  down  one  steep  side  and  up  the  other, 
to  seize  again  upon  the  highest  point  and  cling  to  it,  holding 
always  the  skyline  of  an  immense  country  to  the  north  and 
to  the  south. 

Up  here  on  these  heights,  and  walking  along  the  broad 
surface  of  the  wall  between  Borcovicus  and  Crag  Lough,  there 
is  at  least  as  noble  and  inspiring  a  prospect  as  at  any  part  of 
this  west  Northumbrian  section.  Though  not  just  here  more 
than  a  thousand,  and  never  more  than  thirteen  hundred  feet 
above  sea-level,  the  sensation  is  always  that  of  a  much 
higher  altitude.  Far  away  upon  both  sides  are  rounded 
crests  and  waving  ridges  innumerable,  of  greater,  and  many 
of  twice  the  height.  But  distance  effectually  disposes  of  this 
predominance,  robs  them  of  all  power,  or  of  interference  with 
the  impression  that  one  is  here  on  the  roof  of  the  world,  and 
a  world,  moreover,  in  which  modern  humanity  counts  for  next 
to  nothing,  and  a  mysterious  past  for  much.  Immediately 
beneath  and  to  the  southward,  in  the  wide  grassy  trough  that 
runs  along  behind  the  wall,  there  are  sparks  of  life  to  be 
sure — life  of  a  sad  and  sombre  aspect  in  small  dour-looking, 
widely-scattered  farmhouses,  fashioned  mainly  of  the  stone 
that  the  legions  of  Agricola,  of  Hadrian,  of  Severus,  had 
quarried  and  hewn.  Beside  some  of  them  a  thin  plantation 
struggles  bravely  to  break  the  force  of  the  west  winds,  and 
black  stone  dykes  trace  themselves  about  the  bare  pastures. 
Very  different  are  these  from  the  great  homesteads  of  lower 
and  east  Northumberland,  and  sheltering  altogether  another 
type  of  occupant.  As  late  as  1700,  Mr.  Hodgson  tells  us, 
a  gang  of  Armstrongs  still  made  this  country  such  an  un- 
desirable place  of  abode,  that  Houstead's  farm,  close  to 
the  camp,  which,  in  his  day,  a  century  later,  fetched  £300  a 
year,  was  then  sold  in  freehold  for  £58 !  One  of  the  most 
conspicuous  of  those  beneath  us  here,  Bradley  Hall,  has  a 


242     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

peculiar  interest  in  having  sheltered  Edward  the  First  for 
some  days  as  he  came  up  the  Stanegate,  a  Roman  road,  with 
his  army  on  that  last  march  to  Scotland  which  ended  every- 
thing for  him  at  Burgh-on-Sands.  Wade's  Road,  too,  drives 
ahead  beneath  us,  taking  pasture  land  and  hay  meadow, 
moss  and  hill  foot  in  its  stride  as  if  it  were  thinking  of 
nothing  but  the  rumble  of  artillery  and  the  tramp  of  hurrying 
troops.  On  its  edge  sits  a  dejected-looking  edifice,  once  an 
inn  of  great  resort  among  the  Scotch  carriers,  and  bearing  the 
strange  device  of  The  Twice  Brewed.  The  green  vallum,  too, 
with  its  fosse  and  double  banks,  pushes  along  sometimes 
actually  on  the  wall  slope,  sometimes  in  the  bottom,  per- 
sistent always,  mysterious  ever,  and  quite  regardless  of  the 
torment  of  mind  it  causes  among  moderns.  No  stream 
courses  down  what  I  have  called  for  that  reason,  if  the  dis- 
tinction be  permissible,  a  trough  rather  than  a  valley.  But 
peaty  burns,  frothing  and  churning  always  when  I  was  here, 
with  constant  rains,  and  struggling  from  the  north  through 
some  deep  gorge  in  the  whinstone  barrier  of  the  wall,  cross 
the  open,  and  fight  their  way  through  the  softer  ridge  beyond 
into  the  South  Tyne.  But  away  over  all  this  broken  fore- 
ground, beyond  and  over  the  valley  of  the  South  Tyne/which 
lies  hidden  behind  it,  and  away  over  Allandale  on  the  west, 
and  over  Hexhamshire  on  the  east,  you  can  see  the  dark 
moors  and  mountains  of  three  counties ;  'dark,  at  any  rate, 
as  they  were  to  us  in  intermittent  visions  between  the  murk 
and  wrack  of  flying  storms.  A  solitary  hour  of  sunlight,  on 
a  single  day,  showed  us  Cross  Fell  and  the  faint  cone  of 
Skiddaw.  But  the  massive  ridge  of  Tynedale  head,  and  the 
sullen  moorlands  on  the  Cumbrian  border  above  Alstone, 
were  nearly  always  with  us,  and  if  they  were  always  black  and 
lowering,  they  were  "  nae  the  waur  for  that" 

But  it  is  the  northern  outlook  from  the  wall  that,  of 
course,  holds  one  most.  You  look  to  the  south  or  west  as 
over  any  other  landscape  that  is  interesting,  beautiful,  and 
bold.  But  to  the  north  the  sense  of  an  age-long  frontier  is 
overmastering,  for  the  really  marvellous  manner  in  which 


THE  ROMAN  WALL  243 

nature  and  physical  conditions  have  fortuitously  lent  them- 
selves to  perpetuate  an  ancient  fact  in  a  modern  scene.  For 
as  far  as  the  eye  can  see  over  a  billowy  waste  of  moss,  moor- 
land, and  wild  pasture,  the  Pict  might  almost  be  yet  in 
possession.  If  it  was  all  merely  a  conventional  well-covered 
grouse  moor  that  rolled  up  against  the  foot  of  the  cliffs  and 
steeps  on  which  the  wall  is  set,  the  picture  would  lose 
somewhat.  A  breath  of  the  twentieth  century  would  blow 
all  over  it,  in  spite  of  everything.  But  though  there  is  plenty 
of  heather  growing  naturally  in  large  patches  all  about  it,  as 
it  doubtless  always  grew,  and  a  reasonable  stock  of  grouse, 
as  no  doubt,  even  in  Roman  times,  there  always  were,  it 
does  not  suggest  interminable  rows  of  butts  (though  there  are 
butts),  nor  does  it  make  you  think  of  Messrs.  Lumley  &  Son, 
101,  Pall  Mall.  Let  me  hasten  to  discount,  however,  any 
inferences  that  might  be  drawn  from  such  seeming  heresies. 
I  should  be  an  ingrate  indeed  if  I  turned  on  those  pursuits 
of  feather  and  fur  without  which  life's  memories  would  be 
robbed  of  much  more  to  many  of  us  than  the  mere  killing  of 
things.  But  just  here,  this  grand  waste  is  unquestionably 
the  better  for  not  being  an  uncompromising  grouse  moor 
under  modern  conditions,  and  for  wearing  an  aspect  as  nearly 
approaching  primitive  Britain  as  would  be  possible.  It  is 
true  that  a  shepherd's  house  may  be  espied  here  and  there 
upon  the  waste.  But  nothing  worth  mentioning  is  visible, 
and  we  can  see  twelve  or  fifteen  miles  away  to  where  the 
narrow  valley  of  the  North  Tyne — dreaded  haunt,  even  in 
Tudor  and  Jacobean  days,  of  lawless  irresponsible  wights — 
winds  its  shadowy  course  towards  the  Scottish  lairs  of  other 
heroic  evil-doers,  with  not  a  pin  to  choose  between  the  two. 
And  beyond  the  line  of  that  beautiful  and  once  unruly  dale, 
the  wilderness  still  heaves  away  over  wastes  of  bare  shadowy 
hills  up  the  line  of  the  Cheviots,  till  the  bold  tops  of  the 
monarchs  of  that  range,  whose  acquaintance  we  have  already 
made,  rise  faintly,  if  the  day  be  clear,  on  the  horizon.  Such 
was  the  outlook  of  the  Romans'  sentinel,  Gaul  or  Spaniard, 
African  or  Tuscan,  as  he  paced  the  windy  summit  of  the 


244     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Murus,  on  whose  shrunken  masonry  we  may  now  walk  for 
miles  as  on  an  easy  road.  Let  us  hope  he  liked  it !  Our 
ecstasies,  we  may  safely  hazard,  were  not  for  him.  He 
may  well  have  doubted  if  the  "  old  gods "  could  reach  him 
here,  and  so  built  altars  to  ruder  and  sterner  deities,  that  his 
fancy  associated  with  such  floods  and  fells  and  rasping  winds. 
A  distinct  and  welcome  note  in  the  wild  landscape,  and 
just  here  close  at  hand  are  what  are  sometimes  known  as  the 
Northumberland  Lakes.  That  trio  of  them,  which  alone, 
from  their  situation,  affect  the  landscape,  and  for  their  size 
are  worthy  of  notice,  are  a  mile  or  so  apart.  The  smallest, 
Crag  Lough,  long  and  narrow  in  shape,  and  perhaps  twenty 
acres  in  extent,  nestles  under  a  precipice  of  shaggy  pine  and 
birch  wood,  three  hundred  feet  in  height,  and  immediately 
beneath  the  line  of  the  wall,  saving  the  Romans  thereby 
much  labour  and  all  anxiety  for  near  half  a  mile.  To  the 
pilgrim  approaching  it  from  the  east  by  the  wall,  and  before 
dropping  with  the  latter  to  the  deep  gap  and  farmhouse 
known  as  Hot  Bank,  it  presents  a  most  engaging  picture  ; 
particularly  when  fired  by  a  westering  sun  into  a  sheet  of 
molten  gold,  as  I  was  once  privileged  to  see  it  near  the  close 
of  a  stormy  day.  Greenlee  Lough,  which  may  cover  a 
hundred  acres,  lies  out  on  the  fringe  of  the  wilderness  partly 
skirted  by  fir  plantings,  from  which  peers  the  roof  of  a  small 
shooting-box.  Broomlee,  a  trifle  smaller,  is  a  little  to  the 
east  and  more  under  Borcovicus,  and  lies  entirely  among  wild 
surroundings.  Reed-skirted,  peaty,  shallow  meres  are  these, 
the  home  of  innumerable  water-hens  and  the  haunt  in  due 
season  of  a  good  store  of  nobler  and  more  adventurous  fowl, 
particularly  the  gulls  that  haunt  the  Northumbrian  moors  in 
great  numbers,  the  small  black-headed  species  nesting  on 
their  banks.  The  large  non-gregarious  gulls,  Mr.  Chapman 
says,  breed  in  solitude  all  over  the  moors.  I  should  like  to  have 
said  more,  had  space  permitted,  of  a  long  day's  tramp  we  had 
into  these  solitudes  beyond  the  wall.  It  was  a  sombre  and 
harmonious  day ;  but  no  reasonable  distance  was  shut  out, 
and  all  the  spirit  of  the  country  made  it  desirable  to  see  was 


THE  ROMAN  WALL  245 

always  visible.  This  fine  waste  between  the  wall  and  the 
North  Tyne  is,  roughly  speaking,  a  triangle,  the  river  Irthing 
on  the  far  west  forming  its  third  side  and  dividing  it  from 
Cumberland,  into  which  it  sprawls  incontinently.  But  in  the 
Northumbrian  triangle  there  are,  roughly  speaking,  about 
three  hundred  and  fifty  square  miles.  Nowhere,  looking 
north  from  the  Wall,  where  we  have  left  it  for  the  moment,  to 
the  North  Tyne,  do  the  moors  rise  as  high  as  the  twelve  or 
thirteen  hundred  feet  the  Roman  barrier  climbs  at  its  highest 
point,  and  this  it  is  that  gives  to  the  latter  the  overlooking  of 
so  wide  a  region  and  such  extraordinary  distinction.  Nor  is 
it  till  you  get  down  and  out  into  this  waste  and  look  back  at 
the  wall  from  a  mile  or  two  away  that  you  see  how  finely 
scarped  and  plated  with  smooth  whinstone  rock  is  the  face  of 
the  ridge  in  places,  that  from  above  suggested  only  a  con- 
tinuous slope  of  turf.  It  is  only  down  here,  too,  that  you 
realize  that  the  ridge  actually  carrying  the  wall  is  not  the 
only  one  that  drops  in  such  rugged  and  abrupt  fashion,  and 
confronts  the  north  with  mailed  breast.  For  what  appears 
from  the  height  of  the  Roman  ridge  mere  smooth  billows 
of  green  rolling  away  from  its  foot  like  an  ocean  in  a  swell 
develop,  on  a  closer  acquaintance,  into  a  second,  and  some- 
times a  third,  line  of  abrupt  declivities  on  this  northern 
front.  Out  here,  too,  beside  their  lower  and  outer  ramparts, 
are  piled  up  many  fantastic  crags.  One  of  them  marks  the 
site  of  an  Arthurian  cave  legend,  very  similar  to  those  of 
Wales  and  the  West  of  England.  Arthur,  up  here,  is  a 
Strathclyde  hero,  and  local  tradition  immures  him  under 
Sewingshields  with  Guinevere,  his  court,  and  thirty  couple 
of  hounds.  A  horn  and  a  garter  with  a  sword  lie  at  the 
entrance  to  the  cavern,  and  any  mortal  who  may  stumble 
upon  it,  blow  the  horn  and  cut  the  garter,  will  awake  the 
whole  sleeping  company  to  an  astonished  and  an  astonishing 
world.  A  former  tenant  of  Sewingshields,  it  is  said,  once 
discovered  this  subterranean  haunt  and  its  grizzly  occupants. 
He  mustered  up  courage  to  sever  the  garter,  but  when  they 
all  sat  slowly  up,  waiting  for  the  horn,  the  intruder  apparently 


did  not  like  the  look  of  them,  and  decided  not  to  blow  it,  or 
perhaps  fright  had  left  him  no  breath  for  the  operation,  and 
the  fearsome  crew  slowly  relapsed  again  into  their  former 
state  of  coma.  In  his  few  brief  moments  of  renewed  vitality, 
however,  King  Arthur  found  the  opportunity  to  declaim — 

"O  woe  betide  that  evil  day 
On  which  this  witless  wight  was  born, 
Who  drew  the  sword,  the  garter  cut ; 
But  never  blew  the  bugle  horn." 

We  wandered  far  and  wide  over  rough  pastures  among 
Cheviot  and  black-faced  sheep,  through  interludes  of  bloom- 
ing heather  where  the  grouse  rose  betimes,  not,  in  these  days 
of  universal  driving,  pricking  in  the  least  degree  the  wanderer's 
conscience.  Pewits  swooped  and  drubbed,  filling  the  air  with 
their  cries,  and  a  scud  of  golden  plovers  now  and  again  dashed 
across  the  heath.  We  sat  down  to  our  sandwiches  by  a 
shepherd's  house,  bearing  the  appropriate  name  of  Cold 
Knuckles,  but  were  driven  from  perch  to  perch  by  swarms  of 
flying  ants.  We  knocked  in  vain  at  the  door  of  another 
solitary  cabin  under  the  shade  of  three  wind-beaten  ash  trees, 
wherein  abode  a  lonely  ancient  of  literary  habit,  with  whom 
my  companion  left  a  volume  now  and  again.  But  there  was 
no  one  within  save  a  faithful  dog,  who,  judging  by  the 
language  it  used,  would  have  given  an  intruder  an  extremely 
rough  reception.  This  place,  or  one  like  it,  rejoiced  in  the 
name  of  "  Blow  Weary."  We  crossed  brawling  burns  lusty 
from  recent  rains  and  in  good  heart  for  their  long  voyage 
eastward  to  the  North  Tyne,  and  one  or  two  obscure  little 
tarns  noisy  and  alive  with  water-fowl,  mostly,  no  doubt,  of 
the  moorhen  and  coote  variety.  We  pricked  our  way  over 
peat  mosses  and  passed,  set  near  the  edge  of  one,  a  long, 
straggling,  high-gabled,  deserted  cottage  homestead,  built  of 
purloined  Roman  stone  and  thatched  with  heather,  that  one 
might  fancy  could  tell  a  tale  of  centuries,  of  smugglers,  cattle 
thieves,  and  moss  troopers.  We  also  admired  some  basalt 
crags  of  the  most  fantastic  shape,  reared  upon  a  knoll  and 
lifted  finely  above  the  ruffled  waters  of  the  Broomlee  Lough, 


THE   ROMAN  WALL  247 

that  I  was  told  had  some  connection  with  Queen  Guinevere's 
hair-comb  and  a  misunderstanding  with  her  royal  spouse. 
When  we  climbed  again  to  the  hospitable  shelter  of  the  old 
farmhouse  at  Hot  Bank,  near  which  I  have  left  my  reader, 
seated,  as  it  were,  on  the  wall  during  this  parenthetical 
excursion,  the  hot  griddle  cakes  and  tea  and  other  condi- 
ments, in  which  Northumbrian  folk  at  five  o'clock  hold  liberal 
views,  were  peculiarly  grateful.  Nor  did  the  rain,  which  had 
held  off  all  day,  and  now  lashed  furiously  against  the  parlour 
window,  in  any  way  diminish  our  appreciation  of  them, 
though  four  miles  still  lay  between  us  and  Bardon  Mill 
station  away  on  the  South  Tyne.  The  girddle,  or  griddle, 
cake  of  Durham  and  Northumberland  I  used  to  hold  in 
youth,  when  I  had  frequent  opportunities  of  sampling  it, 
beyond  any  product  of  even  the  lowland  Scottish  housewife 
who,  everybody  knows,  wrought,  and  doubtless  does  so  still, 
with  exceptional  cunning  in  articles  of  such  nature.  But 
a  griddle  cake  must  be  home-made  and  served  hot  The 
article  of  commerce,  above  all  when  proffered  cold,  stands  as 
low  on  the  list  of  fancy  breads  as  the  cold  scone  of  the 
pastry-cook,  and  that  is  a  poor  thing  enough.  At  Hot  Bank, 
as  I  have  said,  Crag  Lough  glimmers  delightfully  along  the  foot 
of  the  feathered  crags  that  are  part  of  the  line  of  the  old  Roman 
work.  Beyond  them  the  wall  climbs  away  again  conspicuous, 
and  frequently  on  the  edge  of  precipices  towards  its  highest 
achievement  on  the  summit  of  Whinshields,  though  rent 
across  on  the  way  thither  by  the  two  gaps  of  Steelrigg  and 
Cats'  stairs.  At  the  former  there  is  another  farmhouse,  where 
the  wall  descends  the  steep  slopes,  the  skilful  manner  of  its 
masonry  being  worthy  of  note.  Below  Whinshields,  which  rises 
beyond  Steelrigg  to  a  height  of  1230  feet,  and  some  way  out 
to  the  northward  is  another  ridge,  known  as  Scotch  Coulthard. 
Dr.  Bruce  tells  us,  as  one  may  well  credit,  that  the  country 
beyond  being  unrideable  to  any  not  intimate  with  it,  the 
moss  troopers  held  themselves  as  safe  from  pursuit  when 
they  reached  its  edge,  and  the  fact  that  many  a  skirmish 
took  place  in  the  last  race  between  pursuers  and  pursued 


248     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

between  it  and  the  wall  is  evident  from  the  number  of 
skeletons  that  were  discovered  when  the  land  was  being 
drained.  The  wanderer  may  still  follow  the  wall  with  advan- 
tage on  its  curiously  high  and  wild  course  for  many  miles 
yet,  passing  good  specimens  of  mile  castles,  the  one  at 
Cawfields  being  the  best  of  all.  Just  beyond  this  again,  and 
five  miles  from  Housteads,  is  the  next  camp,  that  of  CEsica, 
covering  three  acres.  Save  for  the  fact  that  it  retains  its 
lines  and  the  traces  of  its  suburbs,  there  is  nothing  calling 
for  further  note  here,  though  much  might  be  said  of  it  in  a 
more  technical  place.  Thence  the  wall  continues  its  course 
over  the  summit  of  the  "nine  nicks  of  Thirlwall,"  rugged 
notches  that  can  be  seen  against  the  sky-line  at  about  eight 
hundred  feet  elevation  over  an  immense  area  of  country. 
After  this  the  long  serrated  ridge  of  whinstone  that  has 
served  it  so  long  and  nobly,  begins  to  droop  and  filter  out  as 
it  approaches  the  Cumbrian  Border,  and  the  wall  with  it 
passes  out  of  all  ken,  at  any  rate  of  the  present  writer. 

By  the  direct  footway  from  Hot  Bank  to  Bardon  Milli 
which  is  practically  all  down  hill,  since  it  follows  an 
impetuous  burn  that  has  cut  deep  through  the  intervening 
ridge,  one  passes  the  important  camp  of  Vindolana,  one  of 
those  which  lie  detached  from  the  wall,  and  in  many  cases, 
almost  certainly  in  this  one,  were  built  in  the  first  century  by 
Agricola.  Clearly  defined  on  the  green  breast  of  a  pasture 
field,  above  the  spot  where  the  Chinely  burn  enters  the  woody 
defile  through  which  it  travels  noisily  to  the  South  Tyne,  two 
miles  below,  the  site  of  Vindolana,  or  Chesterholme,  has  none 
of  the  austerity  of  the  other.  The  masonry  is  grass  grown 
and  within  the  green  rampart  there  is  nothing  now  to  be 
seen.  Excavations,  begun  two  hundred  years  ago,  were 
pursued  with  vigour  and  to  completion  by  Mr.  Hedley,  its 
owner,  early  in  the  last  century.  Excavations  in  those  days, 
as  is  truly  said,  only  lightened  the  labours  for  the  despoiler 
of  all  such  stone-work  as  was  not  suitable  for  museums  or 
collections.  Mr.  Hedley  was  an  enthusiast,  and  spent  his 
later  years  in  work  on  these  stations.  He  built  a  small  villa 


THE   ROMAN   WALL  249 

for  himself  by  the  stream  below,  mainly  out  of  the  material 
from  the  station,  a  proceeding  which  even  a  zealous  antiquarian 
divine,  in  1836,  regarded  as  legitimate.  Picturesquely  but 
somewhat  moistly  nestling  amid  natural  foliage  at  the  brook's 
edge,  it  was  tenantless  and  in  the  hands,  when  we  were  in 
its  neighbourhood,  of  a  leisurely  pair  of  British  workmen,  so 
I  took  the  opportunity  of  exploring  this  rather  romantic  lair 
of  bygone  antiquarian  zeal.  A  roomy  cottage  house  of  low 
pitched  rooms,  deserted  then,  I  think,  for  some  time,  with 
leaves  waving  all  about  it,  and  a  large  burn  brawling  through 
more  leaves  under  the  windows,  it  seemed  to  strike  a  properly 
sympathetic  note.  Houses  built  of  masonry,  already  nearly 
two  thousand  years  old,  may  fairly  be  said  to  inherit  antiquity, 
and  in  this  one  there  were  many  inscribed  stones  let  into 
the  walls,  and  more  carrying  the  herring-bone  marks  of 
the  Roman  mason.  I  remember  particularly  the  boar  of 
the  XXth  Legion  galloping  under  its  motto,  Valens  victrix, 
on  the  wall  of  a  dark  passage  leading  down  to  the  stream. 

The  fourth  cohort  of  the  Gauls  were  quartered  here,  and 
numbers  of  altars  with  other  relics  of  that  corps  were  taken 
hence  and  stand  at  Chesters  and  elsewhere,  among  them  an 
inscription  to  Hadrian  himself.  But  the  most  interesting 
object  now  in  situ  at  Vindolana  is  a  milestone,  circular  in 
shape  and  nearly  six  feet  high,  though,  unfortunately,  the 
lettering  on  it  is  no  longer  decipherable.  It  stands  just 
without  the  garden  fence  of  the  cottage,  and  immediately 
upon  the  old  and  still  very  obvious  Roman  way  of  the 
Stanegate,  which  led  directly  past  the  north  gate  of  Vindolana. 
In  curious  propinquity,  too,  is  a  large  British  tumulus  clad 
with  foliage.  Bardon  Mill  station,  just  below  here,  is  the 
best  point  for  the  visitor  of  a  single  day  to  the  wall.  Thence 
he  can  walk,  or  even  drive,  if  necessary,  on  a  passable  but 
steep  road  to  Housteads  or  Hot  Bank.  Those  more  fortunate 
in  the  matter  of  time,  as  we  were  privileged  to  be,  can  also 
use  Haltwhistle  or  Greenhead,  the  two  next  stopping-places 
on  the  Carlisle  line,  when  approaching  or  descending  from 
the  more  westerly  portions  of  the  most  striking  section  of 
this  uttermost  rampart  of  Imperial  Rome. 


CHAPTER    XI 


THIS  lower  corner  of  Northumberland  to  the  south  of  the 
South  Tyne  and  west  of  Hexham  is  a  fine  block  of  lofty 
upland  capped  with  moors,  whence  sounding  streams  hurry 
northward  through  tortuous  green-bottomed  dales  towards 
the  main  river.  It  is  roughly  a  parallelogram,  with  Hexham 
and  Blanchland  set  at  its  eastern,  Alston  and  Haltwhistle  at 
its  western  angles.  Two  little  railroads  run  up  into  its  heart 
from  the  main  line  along  the  Tyne — one  from  Hexham  to 
Allendale,  which  boldly  clings  to  the  high  hill-slope  for  the 
whole  ten  miles  ;  the  other  from  Haltwhistle,  which  ascends 
the  Tyne  where  reduced  to  the  dimensions  of  a  modest 
stream,  its  course  turns  sharp  to  the  southward  through 
deep  glens  to  Alston.  Allendale  village  may  be  regarded  as 
the  chief  centre  of  this  upland  Arcady,  and  is  perched  about 
a  mile  beyond  the  terminus  which  bears  its  name,  for 
apparently  the  little  line  refused  to  struggle  any  further  up 
the  hills.  Still  higher  up  the  valley  are  some  lead  mines, 
and  elsewhere  are  the  traces  of  disused  ones,  but  not  of  a 
nature  to  detract  in  any  way  from  the  freshness  of  the  land- 
scape. The  village  is  prettily  set  upon  a  ledge  above  the 
East  Allen  amid  a  sufficiency  of  foliage  to  give  it  an  air  of 
snugness  and  luxuriance  amid  the  encompassing  hills.  It 
straggles  round  a  great  open  space,  and  in  August,  when  I 
was  there,  was  much  given  over  to  summer  visitors.  There 
is  really  no  occasion  for  the  wanderer  in  this  country  to  hunt 
up  Allendale  town  at  all.  We  happened  to  be  urged  there  by 
the  cravings  of  hunger  and  thirst  after  a  walk  from  Hexham 

250 


ALLENDALE  251 

through  the  sequestered  back-country  of  the  "Shire,"  and 
thence  over  the  intervening  moors,  which  were  then  great 
waves  of  purple  bloom.  It  was  a  hot  and  blazing  day.  I 
had  fondly  pictured  to  myself  some  snug  parlour  behind  a 
bar  where  the  foaming  tankard  might  be  quaffed  in  the 
company  of  a  sheep  farmer  or  two  or  some  other  entertaining 
native.  But  Allendale  proved  deplorably  fashionable.  Two 
or  three  brakes  were  loading  or  unloading  Tynesiders,  while 
individuals  in  summer  suits  lounged  about,  wearing  that  air 
of  proprietorship  which  the  summer  visitor,  when  he  has  been 
more  than  two  seasons  to  the  same  place,  automatically 
assumes.  There  might  have  been  bars,  but  not  snug  ones, 
harbouring  original  bucolics.  We  ultimately  found  our- 
selves in  a  very  much  occupied  hotel,  and  driven  by  a  relent- 
less fate  into  an  upstair  coffee-room  of  colossal  proportions 
and  garish  complexion,  where,  seated  at  a  long  table,  a 
voracious  bourgeoisie  were  disposing  of  a  five-o'clock  meal  of 
roasted  joints  and  tea.  We  had  managed  badly,  or  rather 
suffered  ourselves  to  be  managed  too  much. 

But  the  normal  way  to  get  by  road  to  Allendale  is  along 
the  South  Tyne  to  Haydon  Bridge  and  thence  upward  into 
the  hills,  and  a  very  excellent  and  interesting  road  it  is,  both 
for  certain  objects  of  antiquity  that  stand  hard  by  it,  and 
for  the  fine  curves  of  the  broad  river  flashing  from  pool 
to  rapid  in  the  meadowy  vale  below.  This  is  the  main 
attraction  for  the  six  miles  of  uplifted  road  that  lead  to 
Haydon  Bridge,  at  which  point  one  may  be  said  to  touch  the 
inner  sanctuary  of  the  raiders  and  the  southernmost  of  the 
three  famous  valleys,  those  of  North  Tyne  and  Rede  being 
the  others. 

At  Haydon  Bridge,  a  large  village  whose  chief  attraction 
lies  in  its  fine  old  bridge  across  the  Tyne,  was  one  of  the 
fords  affected  by  Scottish  armies  when  they  had  swept  Nor- 
thumberland, and  had  their  eyes  on  the  ample  spoils  of  the 
rich  Durham  bishops  and  the  priors  of  Hexham.  The  bridge 
has  some  further  interest,  too,  in  having  been  the  only  one 
standing  high  up  the  Tyne  in  the  turbulent  sixteenth  century. 


252     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

When  the  river  rose  behind  Scottish  or  North  Tynedale 
raiders  into  the  bishoprick,  it  was  their  only  chance  of  escape, 
and  was  chained  in  consequence,  as  in  the  famous  ballad  of 
"  The  Rookhope  Ride."  In  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  when  the 
Earls  of  Northumberland  and  Westmoreland  were  making 
their  ill-starred  insurrection,  the  Tynedale  rievers  took  the 
opportunity  of  pricking  into  Weardale,  where  they  were 
repulsed,  chased,  and  worsted. 

11  Then  in  at  Rookhope  head  they  came, 

They  ran  the  first  but  a  mile  ; 
They  gathered  together  in  four  hours, 

Six  hundred  sheep  within  a  while. 
Thir  limmer  thieves  they  have  good  beasts ; 

They  nevir  think  to  bee  o'erthrown. 
Three  banners  against  Weardale  men  they  bear, 

As  if  the  world  were  all  their  own." 

The  church  at  Haydon  Bridge  is  little  more  than  a  century 
old  ;  for  the  original  village  stood  on  the  breast  of  the  high 
hill  to  the  northward,  and  the  chancel  of  its  twelfth  century 
church  with  a  chantry  still  survives  there,  in  occasional  use 
and  good  repair,  and  possessed  of  a  curiously  narrow  triple 
lancet  window  in  the  east  end.  Many  very  ancient  inscribed 
grave-covers  have  been  let  into  the  walls  and  windows  of  the 
little  church,  which  is  partly  composed  of  Roman  stones,  and 
has  a  Roman  altar  for  a  font.  An  eccentric  epitaph,  relating 
to  the  cheerfulness  with  which  an  individual  of  Queen  Anne's 
time  underwent  several  operations  for  dropsy,  may  be  read 
on  a  tomb  in  the  graveyard  outside,  and  is  much  quoted. 
But  my  fancy  was  much  more  taken  by  one  the  vicar  pointed 
out  in  the  later  churchyard  below,  obviously  to  a  local 
songster — 

"  Be  not  offended  at  our  good  complaint, 
Ye  quire  of  angels  that  have  gained  a  saint, 
Where  full  perfection  meet  in  skill  and  voice  : 
We  mourn  our  loss,  but  yet  commend  your  choice." 

The  colloquial  familiarity  of  this  is  not,  I  think,  easy  to  match, 
and  quite  worthy  of  that  complacent  generation  who  ground 
hand-organs  in  church,  and  endeavoured  to  sing  up  to  them. 


ALLENDALE  253 

On  the  bridge,  which  is  of  six  arches,  a  horn  was  wont  to 
be  blown  in  the  more  primitive  days  of  fox-hunting  as  a 
summons  to  the  trencher-fed  hounds  from  the  surrounding 
country.  Clear  and  rapid  as  is  this  South  Tyne,  the  salmon, 
as  I  mentioned  before,  prefer  the  northern  stream,  and  com- 
paratively few  pass  up  here  under  Haydon  Bridge,  nor  is  it 
nowadays,  at  any  rate,  nearly  as  good  a  trout  stream  as 
the  other.  There  were  such  fine  freshets,  however,  in  this 
particular  August  that  the  very  look  of  one  of  them  fining 
down  into  an  alluring  sherry  colour  tempted  me  to  a  whole 
morning's  wading  in  it  with  a  trout-rod  against  my  better 
judgment.  An  ardent  disciple,  too,  from  a  far  south-western 
county,  where  the  trout  rise  in  any  summer  month  under 
such  conditions,  egged  me  on.  I  ought  to  have  known  from 
a  well-earned  experience  how  completely  the  trout  of  most  of 
these  larger  rapid  rivers  abjure  the  fly  in  late  July  and  most 
of  August.  But  for  the  whole  of  that  pleasant  balmy  morn- 
ing, at  any  rate,  we  cast  ours  with  futile  zeal  and  patience 
on  the  amber  shallows,  the  black  whirling  eddies  below  the 
rocks,  and  over  the  long  streaming  pools.  It  was  a  perfect 
morning's  fishing,  except  for  the  fish.  Woods  rose  high 
above  the  broad  brawling  river  on  its  further  shore,  and  long 
beds  of  shingle,  only  just  dry  from  the  late-fallen  floods, 
spread  wide  along  the  hither  one,  where  sandpipers  and 
yellow  wagtails  preened  themselves  in  the  sun  far  from  the 
world's  alarms,  and  the  water,  reflecting  a  hundred  colours 
from  the  varied  bottom  and  the  changing  skies,  surged  along, 
mocking  our  efforts  with  its  very  perfection  of  condition. 
The  angler  has  many  consolations  beside  fish,  which  partly 
account  for  what  the  outsider  considers  his  abnormal  patience. 
When  we  sat  down  on  a  rock  to  discuss  our  sandwiches  at 
midday,  I  don't  think  we  had  any  idea  of  abandoning  the 
pursuit,  though  neither  of  us  had  seen  the  fin  of  anything 
bigger  than  a  samlet.  But  at  that  moment  the  figure  of  a 
salmon-fisher,  with  a  rod  that  could  have  landed  a  whale, 
broke  upon  our  solitude,  and  eyed  us  curiously — I  fancied 
also  pityingly.  He  was  an  amiable-looking,  orange-whiskered, 


254     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

large-limbed  person,  as  he  needed  to  be  with  such  tackle. 
As  a  Northumbrian  always  waits  for  a  stranger  to  break  the 
ice,  we  inquired  after  his  fortunes.  He  had  done  nothing 
himself,  he  said,  though  he  seemed  greatly  cheered  by  the 
rumour  of  a  fish  having  been  caught  two  days  previously 
below  Haydon  Bridge.  He  evidently  thought  us  natural 
fools  to  be  throwing  a  trout-fly  on  the  South  Tyne  at  that 
date,  and  practically  said  so,  a  suspicion  that  had  long  been 
ripening  into  a  certainty  in  my  own  mind.  But  before  we 
had  done  with  him,  he  had  unfolded,  not  perhaps  too  willingly, 
a  career  beside  which  our  four  hours  of  pleasant  futility  were 
as  nothing.  He  admitted  that  he  was  fond  of  salmon-fishing, 
and  that  he  frequented  this  reach  with  tolerable  assiduity, 
but  a  searching  cross-examination  extracted  the  further 
admission,  which  was  creditable  to  his  honesty,  that  he  had 
never  yet  caught  a  fish  !  We  watched  him  work  down  a  fine 
pool  below  us,  and  his  line  seemed  to  fly  out  with  reasonable 
straightness  from  the  telegraph-post  that  drove  it,  so  one 
must  suppose  he  was  one  of  the  unlucky  ones  of  this  earth, 
or  that  very  few  salmon  patronized  the  South  Tyne.  But 
very  likely  he  was  a  poet,  and  saw  all  sorts  of  things  in  the 
face  of  the  moving  waters  and  in  the  depths  of  the  woods 
above,  and  was  quite  happy.  We  could  hardly  stay,  how- 
ever, after  this,  though  it  had  been  hinted  we  might  get  a 
trout  or  two  after  sunset.  But  we  had  not  proposed  to  spend 
the  night  here,  and  it  was  now  midday,  so  we  acknowledged 
ourselves  defeated,  and  carried  away  nothing  but  the  memory 
of  a  pleasant  interview  at  the  closest  quarters  with  a  mile  or 
so  of  a  river  famous  in  story  and  good  to  look  upon.  Yet 
how  curiously  dual  is  the  personality  of  these  water  gods. 
The  world  pictures  the  deity  of  the  Tyne  as  a  grim  Hercules 
wielding  a  coal-pick  or  a  sledge-hammer ;  but  a  wanderer, 
such  as  we  have  been,  in  his  kingdom  would  always  instinc- 
tively recall  it  as  a  fair  domain  of  pellucid  waters  and  fresh 
woods,  of  purple  moors  and  hoary  towers  eloquent  of  "  old 
forgotten  far-off  things." 

Perched  midway  on  the  long  slope  that  trends  upward 


ALLENDALE  255 

and  southward  from  the  Tyne  to  the  Hexhamshire  moors, 
the  grey  towers  of  Langley  dominate  this  reach  of  the  vale. 
After  standing  for  five  centuries  in  ruin,  the  castle  was 
acquired  by  the  late  Mr.  Bates,  the  historian,  and  made 
habitable  within,  while  without,  to  judge  from  early  photo- 
graphs, the  only  serious  addition  to  its  general  appearance  has 
been  the  repairs  of  the  top  of  the  towers  and  the  restoration 
of  the  battlements.  This  modified  effort  by  a  distinguished 
antiquary,  to  give  his  possession  the  full  measure  of  such 
external  dignity  as  belonged  to  it  in  the  time  of  the  Edwards, 
may  or  may  not  attract  the  beholder.  But  compared  with 
some  restorations,  the  amount  required  externally  was  so  slight, 
and  the  details  to  be  supplied  so  obvious,  that  they  need,  I 
think,  detract  nothing  from  such  pleasures  of  the  imagina- 
tion as  this  really  imposing  pile  may  offer  to  the  beholder. 
Four  massive  corner  towers  of  unequal  size  seem  at  the  first 
sight — the  curtains  being  somewhat  short — to  comprise  most 
of  the  building,  which  stands  up  proud  and  weather  beaten, 
massive  and  sombre  on  its  raised  platform.  In  spite  of 
internal  alterations,  no  modern  lights  noticeable  in  a  general 
view,  spoil  the  stern,  warlike  expanse  of  tower  or  curtain. 
Some  of  the  original  Pointed  and  Decorated  windows  have 
been  restored  at  the  north  and  south  end,  but  for  the  most 
part  the  castle  is  as  complete  a  picture,  either  from  the 
heights  above  or  the  vale  below,  of  a  fourteenth-century 
Border  fortress  as  one  might  wish  for.  The  very  fact,  as  the 
late  owner  pointed  out,  of  having  been  gutted  by  fire  some 
fifty  years  after  its  erection,  and  practically  never  touched 
again,  may  curtail  its  historical  interest,  but  architecturally, 
as  a  specimen  of  its  day,  is  of  course  immensely  in  its  favour, 
seeing  how  bravely  it  has  defied  both  time  and  the  despoiler. 
The  barony  of  Langley,  of  which  the  castle  and  its  manor- 
house  predecessor  was  the  centre,  has  some  retrospective 
interest  in  having  been  politically  outside,  though  geographi- 
cally within,  the  franchise  of  Tynedale ;  that  is  to  say,  the 
basin  of  the  two  Tynes  as  far  east  as  Hexhamshire,  and  this 
is  only  worth  noting  here  as  that  region  had  been  handed 


256     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

over  to  the  Kingdom  of  Scotland  by  Henry  the  Second,  as 
compensation  to  William  the  Lion  for  his  loss  of  the  Earl- 
dom of  Northumberland.  It  remained  so  till  the  time  of 
Edward  the  First,  who,  as  may  be  imagined  with  his  soaring 
but  unfulfilled  ambitions  and  lawyer-like  temperament,  did 
not  tolerate  this  kind  of  patchwork,  unless  it  went  in  his 
favour,  as  in  the  case  of  portions  of  Roxburgh,  which  remained 
English  ground  long  after  his  day. 

So  the  Scottish  officials  of  those  days  held  their  Courts 
throughout  the  whole  country  west  and  north-west  of  Hex- 
ham,  actually  travelling  through  the  barony  of  Langley,  which, 
for  reasons  unknown,  remained  English  ground,  and  some  of 
the  records  of  their  progress  remain.  This,  too,  is  of  interest, 
as  emphasizing  the  well-known  fact  that  the  real  Border 
feuds,  qua  Border,  had  not  yet  begun.  War  was  still  inter- 
national in  a  wide  sense,  and  even  thus  devoid  of  bitterness, 
or  else  it  was  the  normal  though  fierce  enough  quarrels  of 
individuals.  Liddesdale  and  Teviotdale  were  not  yet  pitted 
against  Tyne  and  Rede.  Population  in  these  parts,  at  any 
rate,  was  then  no  doubt  thin  enough,  and  not,  as  in  the  days 
to  come  of  Border  feuds  and  forays,  too  numerous  for  an 
honest  living  on  so  cold  a  soil.  The  early  owners  of  Langley, 
who  were  regarded  as  Lords  of  "Tinedale,"  do  not  matter 
here.  It  will  be  enough  to  say  that  it  came  by  marriage  to 
the  Lucys,  the  third  of  whom  was  that  famous  Sir  Thomas, 
who  fought  at  Crecy,  and  being  sent  home  immediately  after- 
wards to  negotiate  a  truce  with  Scotland,  arrived  just  in  time 
to  head  a  column  in  that  heterogeneous  army  which  crushed 
the  Scots  at  Neville's  Cross.  It  was  mainly  he  who,  with  the 
spoils  of  Crecy  and  moneys  received  on  account  of  Neville's 
Cross,  built  the  strong  fortress,  poised  three  hundred  feet 
above  the  Tyne,  and  fronting  northward  to  the  rugged  sky- 
line of  the  Roman  wall,  that  we  now  see  ;  a  worthy  monument 
of  so  renowned  a  soldier  and  two  famous  victories.  One 
might  add,  too,  that  the  motive  for  raising  a  castle  where  a 
manor-house  had  hitherto  sufficed,  was  not  vanity  but  self- 
defence,  and  its  promptings  were  common  enough  along  both 


ALLENDALE  257 

sides  of  the  Border.  The  international  attitude  was  by  now 
thoroughly  embittered,  and  Lucy's  barony  on  the  South 
Tyne,  seems  to  have  been  sorely  wasted  by  the  Scottish 
army  on  the  march  towards  that  fatal  field,  where  he 
himself  played  the  victor's  part.  Begun  about  1350,  the 
castle  was  gutted  in  1405,  as  is  supposed  by  the  troops 
of  Henry  the  Fourth  in  his  campaign  against  the  rebellious 
Earl  of  Northumberland,  into  whose  hands  it  had  then 
passed.  From  the  Percies  it  went  to  the  Nevilles,  and  in  the 
seventeenth  century  to  the  Ratcliffes,  falling,  under  the 
attainder  of  the  Earl  of  Derwentwater  with  the  rest  of  his 
property,  to  the  Trustees  of  Greenwich  Hospital,  who  sold  it 
to  the  late  restorer. 

Some  two  miles  up  the  Tyne,  the  Allen  enters  it  from  the 
south,  issuing  from  a  glen  whose  heights  are  richly  draped  in 
the  ample  woodlands  of  Ridley  Hall.  But  the  ancient  head- 
quarters of  the  Rid  leys,  from  whom  this  latter  seat  takes  its 
name,  lies  a  couple  of  miles  further  up  the  Tyne,  and  on  the 
same  bank,  within  sight  of  the  station  and  village  of  Bardon 
Mill.  This  is  the  fortified  manor-house  of  Willimoteswyke, 
which  is,  and  has  been  for  many  generations,  the  residence 
of  substantial  farmers ;  a  large  embattled  gate-tower  show- 
ing in  front  of  a  low  residence,  flanked  with  two  smaller 
towers,  and  beautifully  situated  on  swelling  ground  just  above 
the  river.  The  gate-tower,  which  is  some  forty  feet  by 
twenty,  still  retains  its  old  rooms,  with  chimneys  and  windows 
but  little  altered  ;  the  battlements  project  imposingly,  as  in 
most  of  these  Northumbrian  fortresses,  on  a  row  of  corbels, 
while  an  archway,  still  containing  the  upper  hinges  and  the 
hole  for  the  slip  bar,  leads  into  a  large  courtyard.  The 
manor-house,  though  plain,  is  unspoiled,  and  externally 
harmonious  with  the  spirit  of  the  place.  Inside  it  has  of 
necessity  been  more  or  less  adapted  to  modern  uses.  But 
the  smaller  towers  on  the  flank  behind  are  curious,  being 
only  some  sixteen  feet  by  eight,  and  tapering  gradually 
towards  the  battlements,  which  have  disappeared.  The 
curtain  walls  which  surrounded  the  courtyard  have  practically 


258     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

vanished,  and  been  replaced  by  farm  buildings  of  various 
dates. 

The  place  would  appeal  even  to  those  with  small  interest 
in  Border  heroes  as  the  early  home  of  Nicholas  Ridley,  the 
famous  Bishop  of  London,  and  Marian  martyr,  who  was  burnt 
at  Oxford  in  1555.  It  belongep  to  a  Nicholas  Ridley  in 
1484.  A  Nicholas  Ridley  wa£  still  in  possession,  and  of 
sufficient  importance  to  be  a  commissioner  for  arranging  the 
truce  with  Scotland,  broken  by  Flodden.  His  son,  too,  was  a 
Sir  Nicholas,  and  his  son  again,  though  doubtless  a  younger 
one,  if,  indeed,  he  was  not  a  nephew  was  the  heroic  bishop. 
"  He  was  born  in  mine  own  Northumberland,"  says  his  friend 
Turner,  the  Dean  of  Wells,  "  at  the  village  of  Wilowmontiswik, 
and  descended  from  the  noble  stock  of  the  Ridleys."  There 
were  Ridleys  at  Unthank,  too,  close  by,  and  that  place,  though 
the  original  house  is  replaced  by  a  modern  one,  claims  to  be 
the  bishop's  birthplace.  It  does  not  much  matter,  as  there  are 
pathetic  farewell  letters  from  him  to  his  sister,  at  Unthank, 
and  his  cousin  at  Willimoteswyke,  in  which  he  appeals  to  the 
latter  as  "  Bell  wether  to  order  and  conduct  the  rest "  (of  the 
Ridley  family). 

A  pious  legend  due  to  the  late  Mr.  Surtees'  use  of  poetic 
licence,  and  somewhat  akin  to  that  which  attributes  the 
Forsters'  financial  ruin  to  the  'fifteen,  seems  to  have  generally 
credited  the  downfall  of  the  Ridleys  to  their  loyalty  to  the 
Stuart  cause.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  last  Ridley  of  Wil- 
limoteswyke  had  been  bought  out  by  a  Neville  before  the 
civil  war  began,  and  was  already  but  a  tenant  on  the  estate, 
and  after  the  Restoration  the  Nevilles  sold  it  to  the  Blacketts, 
who  own  it  now.  But  the  Ridleys  had  been  a  great  race,  and 
we  are  now  inside  that  country  where  men  had  to  do  or  die, 
and  existed  most  certainly  in  the  matter  of  goods  and  chattels 
just  so  long  as  they  had  the  power  to  keep  them. 

Not  long  before  the  bishop's  martyrdom  these  Ridleys  of 
Willimoteswyke  and  their  relations  were  concerned  in  the 
killing  of  Sir  Albany  Featherstonehaugh,  a  neighbour  with 
whom  they  were  at  feud.  The  raid  of  Featherstonehaugh 


ALLENDALE  259 

was  described  in  a  modern  antique  ballad  by  Surtees,  who,  on 
the  strength  of  his  intimacy  with  Scott,  played  so  sore  a 
practical  joke  on  him  with  this  same  composition  that  it  is 
thought  he  never  had  the  heart  to  undeceive  him  and  enjoy 
his  own  success.  In  the  first  canto  of  Marmion  it  will  be 
remembered  how  the  harper  is  called  in  to  entertain  that 
haughty  soul  after  the  feast  at  Norham,  and  fails  signally  with 
the  "  barbarous  lay  "  that  tells— 

"  How  the  fierce  Thir walls  and  Ridleys  all, 
Stout  Willimoteswick, 
And  that  Hard  riding  Dick 
And  Hughie  of  Hawden  and  Will  o'  the  wal 
Have  set  on  Sir  Albany  Featherstonehaugh, 
And  taken  his  life  at  the  Deadmanshaw." 

To  make  it  worse,  Scott  explains  in  a  footnote  how  an  old 
woman  at  Alston  had  repeated  it  to  the  agent  there,  who 
had  transcribed  it  for  the  benefit  of  Mr.  Surtees,  who,  in 
turn  had  kindly  supplied  Sir  Walter  himself  with  it.  The 
supposed  old  woman  averred  that  when  she  was  a  girl  it 
used  to  be  sung  "till  the  roof  rang  again."  Sir  Walter 
introduced  it  into  "Marmion,"  he  tells  us,  for  the  better 
preservation  of  so  valuable  an  old  ballad.  Mr.  Surtees 
must  assuredly  have  felt  he  had  a  little  over-done  it  when 
he  received  his  presentation  copy.  Early  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  one  William  Lowes  lived  at  Willimoteswyke,  a 
gentleman  of  family  and  position,  though  obviously,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Bates,  who  must  have  had  practical  as  well  as 
antiquarian  reasons  for  familiarity  with  the  title  deeds,  not  its 
owner.  At  any  rate,  he  was  a  county  keeper,  an  important 
office,  surviving  from  March  Warden  organization,  and  had 
charge  of  the  South  Tyne.  A  Charlton  of  the  chief  clan  or 
greyne  of  Redesdale  held  the  same  honourable  office  for  that 
almost  adjacent  country.  But  instead  of  keeping  the  peace, 
these  two  custodians  of  the  law  fell  into  a  deadly  feud  with 
one  another,  and  for  several  years  kept  the  whole  country  in 
an  uproar  by  their  uncontrollable  antipathies.  Several  en- 
counters seem  to  have  taken  place,  all  in  the  reign  of  Queen 


260     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Anne,  in  which  the  Redesdale  champion  proved  always 
the  more  valiant,  Lowes  apparently  escaping  serious  injury 
by  the  admirable  horses  he  kept.  On  one  occasion  he  only 
saved  his  life  through  an  old  woman  slamming  a  gate  in  the 
face  of  Charlton,  of  Leehall,  who  was  right  on  his  heels.  On 
another,  near  Bellingham,  in  the  heart  of  the  enemy's  country, 
Lowes'  horse  was  killed  by  a  stab  made  at  the  rider's  thigh, 
and  he  only  saved  himself  by  leaping  on  another  and  making 
a  bolt  for  it.  A  well-known  quatrian  written  by  a  follower  of 
Willimoteswyke  preserves  this  incident — 

"  Oh,  had  Leehall  been  but  a  man 

As  he  was  never  ne'an, 
He  wad  have  stabbed  the  rider 
And  litten  the  horse  ale'an." 

But  Leehall  was  very  much  of  a  man,  for  eventually,  at  a 
conflict  near  Sewingshields  on  the  Wall,  he  not  only  worsted 
Lowes,  but  captured  him.  Then  it  seems  killing  was  not  a 
sufficiently  sweet  revenge,  so  the  unfortunate  keeper  of  South 
Tynedale  was  borne  away  to  Leehall,  hard  by  the  meeting  of 
the  North  Tyne  and  Rede,  and  there  chained  to  the  kitchen 
grate  with  just  enough  tether  to  admit  of  his  eating  at  the 
servants'  table.  From  this  durance  vile  the  Willimoteswyke 
following  were  not  sufficiently  strong  enough,  or  stout- 
hearted enough,  to  deliver  their  chieftain,  and  as  he  and  his 
tormentor  alone  represented  the  arm  of  the  law  in  this  law- 
less country,  they  had  the  situation  to  themselves,  or  rather 
one  of  them  had.  But  close  to  Haydon  Bridge  there  lived  at 
that  time  a  famous  character,  one  Frank  Stokoe,  of  a  good 
name,  but  small  patrimony.  He  was  so  large,  however,  and 
so  courageous,  and  so  independent,  that  he  did  pretty  much 
what  he  liked  with  impunity,  among  other  things  exercising 
sporting  rights  with  his  dogs  over  the  whole  country,  no  one 
being  bold  enough  to  say  him  nay.  So  the  Willimoteswyke 
faction  in  their  trouble  sought  his  assistance,  and  the  enter- 
prise being  suited  to  his  taste,  he  proceeded  straightway  to 
Leehall  before  Charlton  was  out  of  bed,  and  gave  him  the 
option  of  releasing  Lowes  or  suffering  the  weight  of  his 


ALLENDALE  261 

untimely  visitor's  hand.  Even  the  bellicose  Charlton  did  not 
take  long  in  choosing,  and  Mr.  Lowes  was  duly  unchained 
and  restored  to  his  friends,  whose  loyalty  under  the  circum- 
stances was  commendable,  even  if  their  attitude  was  undigni- 
fied. Stokoe,  however,  had  made  enemies,  who  were  not 
disposed  to  lie  down  under  this  and  other  humiliations,  and 
one  winter  night,  while  wrapped  in  slumber  in  his  house  near 
Haydon  Bridge,  he  was  awakened  by  his  daughter,  who  told 
him  that  a  party  outside  were  trying  to  draw  the  bolt  of  the 
front  door.  Slipping  downstairs,  he  saw  the  point  of  a  knife 
insidiously  at  work  with  this  intent.  So,  loading  his  musket 
with  slugs,  and  dropping  through  the  trap-door  into  the  lower 
story,  where  the  cows  were  kept,  he  passed  stealthily  out  of 
this  basement  door  to  the  foot  of  the  stone  steps,  which  in 
those  comparatively  peaceful  times  led  up  to  the  front  story 
in  place  of  the  old-fashioned  ladder,  and  there  he  beheld  four 
men  with  a  dark  lantern,  still  engaged  upon  his  door-lock. 
Then,  with  some  wealth  of  invective,  at  which,  among  his 
other  accomplishments,  he  was  an  adept,  he  swore  he  would 
make  the  starlight  shine  through  some  of  them,  and  putting 
his  threat  into  immediate  execution,  dropped  one  dead, 
whereat  the  others  vanished  in  terror  into  the  darkness. 
After  this  he  secured  his  doors  again,  and  retired  quite  un- 
concernedly to  the  sleep  of  the  just.  In  the  morning  the 
body  had  been  carried  away,  leaving  a  trail  of  frozen  blood 
down  the  steps,  which  apparently  closed  the  incident.  Stokoe 
joined  Lord  Derwentwater  in  the  'fifteen,  and  escaped  from 
Preston  by  leaping  his  horse  over  a  wall.  He  went  to  London 
afterwards  in  disguise,  with  a  view  to  bringing  his  leader's 
body  back  to  Dilston,  the  Government  having  refused  that 
privilege  to  the  widow.  While  there  a  skilful  Italian  swords- 
man was  vaunting  his  prowess  against  any  and  all  comers, 
and  Stokoe,  who  possessed  great  skill  of  fence,  added  to  his 
vast  physical  strength,  was  persuaded  by  his  friends  to  an 
encounter,  which  resulted  in  the  fatal  spitting  of  the 
foreigner.  In  his  mission  concerning  Derwentwater's  re- 
mains he  succeeded  also,  and  these  were  conveyed,  as  we 


262     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

know,  to  the  vault  at  Dilston.  Stokoe,  however,  was  a 
proscribed  man,  and  even  after  the  general  pardon  never 
succeeded  in  recovering  his  position.  Such  was  Tynedale 
even  under  the  first  George. 

What  it  was  like  in  the  days  of  the  Tudors,  and  what 
things  were  done  there,  is  almost  better  realized  in  the 
matter-of-fact  official  reports  of  contemporary  writers  than  in 
the  abundance  of  more  ornate  literature  in  prose  and  verse 
that  might  suggest  colour,  if  the  sober  documents  did  not 
endorse  it.  This  South  Tyne  was  not  quite  so  turbulent  as 
the  northern  dale  and  the  Rede,  since  it  did  not  lead  directly 
into  Scotland.  But  this  is  a  mere  detail,  for  the  slice  of 
Cumberland  which  lay  between  was  no  defence.  Its  lawless 
people  were  raiders  first,  and  Englishmen  afterwards.  The 
very  March  was  quite  uncertain,  and  in  the  wide  strips  of 
debatable  land  outlaws  and  broken  men  had  attached  them- 
selves to  the  indigenous  clans,  and  swollen  their  numbers  to 
formidable  proportions.  The  Armstrongs  of  Liddesdale, 
with  their  allies,  the  Elliots,  pressed  most  heavily  on  the 
South  Tyne.  They  could  muster,  it  was  said,  three  thousand 
horses  between  them  ;  while  the  former,  more  detached  and 
more  democratic  community  of  despoilers,  had  a  refuge  in 
Tarras  Moss,  whither  they  could  convey  their  goods  and 
stow  their  plunder  and  their  prisoners,  and  defy  the  authori- 
ties of  both  kingdoms  almost  with  impunity.  Tarras  Moss 
was  then  a  lonely  waste,  '*  two  spears'  length  "  in  depth,  with 
dry  spots  of  uplifted  woody  ground  within  it,  that  the  Elliot- 
Armstrong  combination  could  pick  their  way  to  and  maintain 
themselves  upon  till  their  enemies  were  weary  of  waiting.  I  do 
not  know  the  Liddle,  but  I  am  told  that  within  the  memory  of 
old  people  its  banks  were  strewn  with  the  ruins  of  towers 
and  pele  houses,  in  which  these  nimble  foragers  raised  their 
hardy  broods.  Along  this  South  Tyne,  too,  there  are  even  yet 
the  remains  of  several  pele  houses,  altered  or  added  to  for 
modern  usage ;  for  there  were  three  orders  of  fortresses  on 
the  Border,  the  castle,  the  pele  tower,  and  the  pele  house. 
The  latter,  a  mere  lofty  rectangular  stone  cottage,  not,  of 


ALLENDALE  263 

course,  crenulated,  but  like  the  other,  with  the  living-room  on 
the  first  floor,  reached  by  a  movable  ladder  and  the  byre 
beneath.  Around  most  of  them  and  all  the  larger  towers 
was  a  wall  or  stockade,  enclosing  the  barmekyn,  into  which 
the  stock  were  herded  at  the  first  sign  of  war  or  raid.  It 
was  the  first  defence  which  might  or  might  not  be  maintained. 
If  carried,  the  house  or  tower  itself,  with  its  stores,  and  per- 
haps its  choicest  animals  in  the  basement,  was  usually  secure, 
its  defenders,  with  either  bows  or  musquets,  and  heavy 
stones,  being  at  a  great  advantage.  Failing  attempts  to 
smoke  the  little  garrison  out  with  straw,  there  was  nothing  to 
be  done  but  to  pass  on  to  other  like  scenes  of  ravage.  Slow 
sieges,  one  need  hardly  say,  were  not  in  the  programme  of 
the  raiders,  even  had  the  spoil  been  worth  them. 

Halt  whistle,  the  last  little  country  town  in  South  Tyne- 
dale  and  Northumberland,  some  three  miles  above  the  mouth 
of  the  Allen,  had  a  very  lively  time  of  it  in  the  good  old  days. 
A  famous  ballad,  known  as  The  Raid  of  Hautwhistle,  com- 
memorates an  occasion  when  its  sacking  and  burning  by  the 
Armstrongs  was  accompanied  by  even  more  individual  feats 
of  arms  than  usual.  At  Haltwhistle  the  Tyne  leaves  both 
highway  and  railroad  to  pursue  their  westward  course  to 
Carlisle  by  more  tortuous  ways  through  the  barren  country, 
and  itself  turns  upward  towards  the  southern  moors  and  its 
source,  as  if  to  maintain,  as  far  as  possible,  its  character 
as  a  Northumbrian  stream.  Hence,  too,  a  little  railroad 
branches  away  with  the  river  and  follows  its  now  greatly 
diminished  and  more  continually  fretful  stream  by  winding 
ways,  beneath  green  fern-clad  steeps  and  hanging  woods,  to 
Alston,  deep  sunk  in  the  hollow  of  mighty  hills. 

I  am  not  qualified  to  say  much  of  modern  Haltwhistle. 
It  lies  picturesquely  when  viewed  from  the  heights  above  that 
lead  to  the  Roman  wall.  My  only  progress  through  it,  at 
the  close,  too,  of  a  long  day's  walk,  was  a  prolonged, 
laborious,  and  breathless  struggle  to  catch  a  quite  vital 
train  to  Hexham.  To  its  length  I  can  testify,  and,  being 
credited  with  a  population  of  only  sixteen  hundred,  it  can 


264     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

have  no  breadth  to  speak  of.  Its  interminable  main  street, 
I  can  say,  I  hope  without  prejudice,  and  with  sufficient 
accuracy,  is  quite  unlovely,  and  wears  the  stoney,  austere 
expression  of  the  northern  town  in  a  most  unmitigated  and 
uncompromising  degree,  as  if  determined  that  whatever  its 
fate  might  have  in  store  it  should,  at  least,  be  fireproof.  The 
church  is,  I  believe,  both  ancient  and  interesting,  while  hard 
by  is  a  mound  carrying  the  remains  of  a  tower  that,  no  doubt, 
was  in  its  day  quite  indispensable  to  the  peace  of  mind  of 
the  burgesses,  if  one  can  fit  such  civic  sounding  term  to  any 
one  who  had  the  hardihood  to  live  in  Upper  Tynedale,  or 
imagine  them  enjoying,  or  perhaps  wishing  to  enjoy,  peace 
of  mind. 

The  numerous  Ridleys  were,  of  course,  the  leaders  about 
Haltwhistle  and  took  a  notable  hand  in  the  two'kengagements 
at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  which  stirred  the  local 
muse  to  the  before-mentioned  ballad — 

"  The  limmer  thieves  o'  Liddesdale 
Wadna  leave  a  kye  in  the  hail  countrie, 
But  an'  we  gie  them  the  caud  steel, 
Or  gear  they'll  reive  it  a'  awaye, 
Sae  pert  the  stealis.    I  you  say, 
O'  late  they  came  to  Hawtwessyll, 
And  thowt  they  there  wad  drive  a  fray, 
But  Alec  Rydly  shotte  tae  well." 

Nevertheless,  the  Liddesdale  men  got  away  with  sufficient 
booty  to  make  a  subject  of  complaint  by  Sir  Robert  Carey 
to  the  Scottish  king,  who  curtly  replied  that  the  Armstrongs 
were  no  subjects  of  his. 

Upon  this  the  Tynedale  men  took  the  matter  as  usual 
into  their  own  hands  and  raided  Liddesdale,  killing,  among 
others,  the  leader  of  the  Armstrongs. 

"  John  Rydly  thrust  his  speir 
Reel  thro'  Sim  o'  the  Cathills  wame." 

Sim  o'  the  Cathill  was  a  prodigious  hero,  and  his  death 
brought  down  the  Armstrongs  again  on  Haltwhistle. 


ALLENDALE  265 

"  Then  came  Wat  Armstrong  to  the  toun, 
Wi'  some  three  hundred  chiel  or  mair, 
And  sweir  that  they  wad  bren  it  down, 
A'  clad  in  Jack  wi'  bow  and  spear." 

And  so  apparently  they  did,  in  spite  of  Alec  Rydley — 

"  Who  lette  flee 
A  clothyard  shaft  ahint  the  wa', 
It  struck  Wat  Armstrong  in  the  'ee, 
Went  thro'  his  steel  cap,  heed  and  a', 
I  wot  it  made  him  quickly  fa', 
He  cu'dna  rise  tho'  he  essayed, 
The  best  at  thieve  craft  or  the  Ba', 
He  neer  again  shall  ride  a  raid." 

This  note  of  lament  on  the  death  of  a  great  football  player 
may  surprise  the  reader,  but  football  was  even  then  a  popular 
game  on  the  Borders,  and  in  the  intervals  of  cutting  one 
another's  throats,  Elliots,  Armstrongs,  and  Scotts  seem  to 
have  occasionally  measured  their  strength  against  the  Ridleys, 
Charltons,  Robsons,  and  Halls  in  a  friendly  contest.  These 
early  international  matches  must  have  been  Homeric  contests 
indeed  !  Sir  Robert  Carey  has  left  very  illuminating  accounts 
of  his  endeavours  to  put  down  disorder  on  the  middle  March. 
He  even  undertook,  what  had  baffled  the  Scottish  Earl  of 
Angus  with  a  large  force,  to  wit,  the  subjection  of  the  Arm- 
strongs in  their  refuge  at  Tarras  Moss.  Carey  was  a  new 
broom,  and  a  south  countryman.  He  made  an  appeal  to 
the  fighting  leaders  of  the  Northumbrian  Border,  but  the 
older  heads  laughed  at  him,  and  declared  that  he  might  hem 
the  Amstrongs  in  for  the  whole  summer,  but  that  with  winter 
he  would  have  to  leave  himself,  and  the  others  would  be  out 
again  with  greater  enterprise  than  ever.  Some  of  the  younger 
gentils,  however,  he  says,  joined  him,  bringing  three  or  four 
horses  apiece,  while  besides  his  own  soldiers  he  had  the 
help  of  a  Royal  Scottish  corps  quartered  in  Liddesdale.  So 
altogether  he  had  fifty  or  sixty  gentlemen,  and  several 
hundred  rank  and  file.  On  reaching  Tarras  Moss  in  June 
they  built  a  fort  and  cabins  for  the  better  sort  to  lie  in, 
which  they  fitted  with  mattresses  and  beds,  and  made 


266     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

themselves  generally  comfortable.  The  Armstrongs,  in  the 
mean  time,  secure  in  the  woody  and  impenetrable  moss,  sent 
jeering  messages  to  Carey,  telling  him  he  was  like  the  first 
puff  of  a  haggis,  but  would  soon  cool  off,  and  that  when 
winter  came  they,  in  their  turn,  "  would  play  their  parts  and 
keep  him  waking." 

Carey  and  his  friends,  however,  stuck  to  it  till  August, 
and  then  practised  a  pretty  ruse  on  the  Armstrongs,  who 
were  only  expecting  danger  from  the  English  side  of  the 
moss.  The  Warden,  however,  succeeded  in  getting  one 
hundred  and  fifty  mounted  men,  unknown  to  his  enemy,  by 
a  circuitous  route  of  thirty  miles,  on  to  the  Scottish  end  of 
the  waste,  where  they  hid  themselves  in  their  ambuscades. 
Then,  with  three  hundred  horses  and  a  thousand  foot,  he 
pressed  the  outlaws  hard  at  various  points.  The  upshot  of 
all  this  was  that  five  of  their  chief  men  were  captured,  and, 
if  nobody  else  was,  the  Armstrongs  had,  at  least,  been  very 
much  harried  and  greatly  inconvenienced.  At  any  rate, 
Carey  disbanded  his  force  and  marched  back,  much  pleased 
with  himself,  and  declared  that  God  had  greatly  blessed  him, 
and  that  he  was  never  afterwards  troubled  with  these  sort  of 
men.  How  his  successors  fared  is  another  matter.  With  the 
union  of  the  kingdoms,  which  followed  immediately,  there 
was  some  improvement,  as  great  numbers  of  Borderers  were 
shipped  off  to  fight  in  Ireland  and  settled  in  Ulster,  among 
that  virile  race  whose  prosperity  on  Irish  soil  is  a  standing 
object-lesson  to  any  one  but  those  whose  eyes  do  not  wish  to 
see.  Many  a  grandson  of  a  Border  raider  stood  behind  the 
walls  of  Derry.  Thousands  of  Ulstermen  to-day  could  claim 
descent  from  the  hardy  reivers  of  the  Liddel  and  the  Teviot, 
the  Tyne  and  the  Redewater.  Thousands,  too,  of  that  stout 
Scotch-Irish  stock  who  did  more  in  proportion  to  their  numbers 
than  any  other  breed  in  the  making  of  eighteenth-century 
America,  would  find  their  origin  in  the  same  turbulent  source. 
All  round  Haltwhistle  are  the  remains,  or  the  site  of,  fortresses. 
Blenkinsopp  castle  covers  one ;  Ballister  is  still  a  ruin ;  so  is 
Thirlwall,  four  miles  to  the  westward,  and  within  easy  reach 


ALLENDALE  267 

of  the  Nine  Nicks  of  Thirlwall,  over  which  the  Roman  Wall 
climbs  on  its  way  to  Cumberland.  Blenkinsopps  owned  it  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  in  the  next  one  it  had  an  evil 
reputation  for  cattle  lifting.  The  name  of  Thirlwall  is  tradi- 
tionally derived  from  the  first  thirle,  or  breach,  in  the  wall 
made  by  the  Picts. 

But  we  have  now  overleaped  the  mouth  of  the  Allen  by 
some  miles,  and  returning  there  and  pursuing  its  romantic 
windings  upwards  for  a  space,  the  most  beautifully  poised  of 
almost  any  of  the  old  Border  fortresses  may  be  seen  stand- 
ing on  a  green  ledge  at  the  verge  of  a  woody  precipice  many 
hundred  feet  above  the  stream.  There  is  very  little  left,  to 
be  sure,  of  Staward  Pele,  though  enough  to  give  effect  to  its 
superb  situation.  Nor,  again,  does  it  move  one  any  the  less 
from  the  fact  that  much  of  its  masonry  is  Roman,  and  that 
a  Roman  altar,  carved  with  a  bull's  head,  lies  wedged  high 
up  among  its  crumbling  walls. 

Staward  seems  to  have  been  a  sort  of  communal  fortress, 
built  for  the  defence  of  the  neighbourhood  generally,  and  a 
refuge  for  its  goods  and  chattels.  It  was  the  property  of 
Hexham  Abbey,  being,  in  fact,  on  the  fringe  of  the  monks' 
domain  of  Hexhamshire,  though  after  the  Dissolution  it 
became  the  residence  of  the  Bacon  family.  But  much  the 
most  interesting  occupant  of  the  Pele  known  to  fame  was 
one  Dicky  of  Kings  wood,  one  of  those  latter-day  characters 
who,  even  in  the  eighteenth  century,  did  a  little  quiet  raiding, 
just  to  keep  up,  as  it  were,  the  old  traditions  of  the  Border, 
if  only  in  a  faint  and  unheroic  fashion,  and  there  is  one 
immoral  but  humorous  exploit  of  this  wily  soul  that  I  cannot 
pass  over. 

Now,  it  fell  out  that  on  a  certain  occasion  when  Dicky 
was  returning  from  Newcastle,  a  pair  of  fat  oxen  grazing  in  a 
field  at  Denton  burn  near  that  city  sorely  tempted  him.  So, 
hanging  about  till  nightfall,  he  entered  the  field  and  brought 
them  successfully  away.  Their  owner,  on  missing  them  in 
the  morning,  set  off  upon  a  false  scent,  going  due  north 
towards  the  Tweed.  Dicky  in  the  mean  time  had  driven  his 


268     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

prizes  due  west,  to  Lanercost,  in  Cumberland.  Here  an  old 
farmer  took  a  fancy  to  the  cattle,  and  Dicky  to  him,  on 
account  of  a  mare  he  was  riding,  so  the  Cumbrian  purchased 
the  beasts  from  our  hero  for  a  reasonable  sum  in  cash,  and, 
pleased  with  his  bargain,  asked  the  vendor  to  his  house. 
There,  seated  over  the  social  glass,  Dicky  asked  his  host 
what  he  would  take  for  the  mare,  whereat  the  other  replied 
that  no  price  would  buy  her,  for  her  like  was  not  in  Cumber- 
land. Dicky  professed  agreement  with  him,  and  asked  if  he 
was  not  afraid  he  would  find  his  stable  empty  some  morning. 
"  No  fear  whatever,"  said  the  owner,  for  the  mare  occupied  a 
stall  under  his  own  bedroom,  and  he  kept  her  tied  to  the 
manger.  Dicky  was  somewhat  taken  aback  at  this,  but 
expressed  a  cunning  hope  that  the  old  bachelor  had  a  good 
lock.  The  old  man  was  so  pleased  with  his  precautions  that 
he  invited  his  treacherous  guest  to  inspect  his  stable,  which 
he  did,  and  pronounced  favourably  on  its  security.  Having 
encouraged  his  host  to  some  further  libations,  he  left  him  to 
sleep  them  off,  and  took  his  departure.  It  is  needless  to  say 
that  when  the  Cumbrian  awoke  in  the  morning,  his  stable 
door  was  open  and  the  steed  had  gone.  Cursing  the  guile 
of  his  visitor  and  the  simplicity  of  himself,  he  raised  a  hue 
and  cry,  but  there  was  no  trace  of  the  thief,  and  he  had  to 
resign  himself  sorrowfully  to  his  loss. 

Dicky,  in  the  mean  time,  had  galloped  away  eastward  with 
the  price  of  the  bullocks  and  the  mare  to  the  good.  On 
Haltwhistle  Fell  he  ran  right  into  a  man  whom  he  recognized 
as  the  owner  of  the  oxen,  but  who  had  no  knowledge  on  his 
part  of  Dicky,  and  innocently  inquired  if  by  chance  he  had 
seen  anything  of  a  yoke  of  oxen  on  the  road.  Dicky  at  once 
replied  that  he  had,  and  directed  the  inquirer  to  the  farm 
where  he  had  left  them.  The  farmer  was  on  foot  and  tired, 
and  eying  the  other's  horse  proposed  to  purchase  it.  This 
was  not  so  difficult,  as  the  unblushing  tenant  of  Staward 
began  to  think  that  things  were  getting  a  little  warm,  and 
handed  over  the  stolen  horse  for  the  moderate  sum  which 
the  other,  provided  against  emergencies,  was  able  to  pay  on 


ALLENDALE  269 

the  spot.  Moreover,  Dicky  had  a  strong  sense  of  humour, 
which  in  this  case  overbore  his  greed. 

So  when  the  despoiled  farmer  from  Denton  arrived  at 
the  homestead  of  the  despoiled  farmer  near  Lanercost,  the 
first  thing  he  saw  was  his  own  pair  of  oxen  grazing  in  a 
pasture,  and,  as  may  be  imagined,  he  demanded  of  the  honest 
Cumbrian  in  somewhat  heated  language  how  he  came  by 
them.  But  the  other's  attention  was  wholly  riveted  on  his 
own  mare,  and  his  choler  may  well  have  choked  his  utterance, 
in  that  a  man  should  ride  up  on  his  own  stolen  horse  and 
address  him  as  a  cattle  thief.  Tradition  says  that  when  the 
mystery  was  cleared  up  the  two  honest  souls  were  so  over- 
come with  the  humour  of  the  situation  that  they  quietly 
resumed  each  their  own  property,  and  if  they  had  any  clear 
notion  concerning  Dicky,  who  retained  the  price  of  both, 
they  agreed  to  let  bygones  be  bygones. 

Dialect  experts  draw  a  line  across  the  Tyne,  somewhere 
about  Bardon  Mill ;  a  line  which  has  followed  the  eastern 
base  of  the  Cheviots  all  the  way  down  from  the  Tweed, 
and  then  continue  it  southward  up  Allandale,  which  marks 
the  limit  of  the  Northumbrian  burr.  Westward  of  this 
the  Cumbrian  or  Scottish  influence  respectively  predominates, 
and  are  obvious  enough  to  any  one  with  an  ordinary  ear 
or  reasonable  acquaintance  with  Border  speech.  In  all  such 
cases  it  is  rather  the  inflection  and  pitch  of  voice  that  differs 
than  the  written  dialect.  The  Scottish  trill  of  the  "  r,"  how- 
ever, is  as  widely  removed  from  the  Northumbrian  burr — 
which,  again,  has  nothing  in  common  with  what  is  sometimes 
called  the  burr  in  southern  England — as  two  sounds  can  be. 
Across  Tweed  or  Cheviot,  again,  haugh,  like  all  words  ending 
in  "gh"  or  "ch,"  would  be  guttural.  In  Northumberland 
it  is  "  harf,"  while  lough  is  "  lof."  Trough  and  bought,  which, 
north  of  the  Border,  are  of  course  guttural,  are  usually  "  trow  " 
and  "  bowt."  Plough  is  "  pleeugh  "  or  "  pluf."  Northumbrians 
hold  the  "  b  "  as  superfluous  in  words  like  humble  and  tumble, 
and  perhaps  one  of  the  most  characteristic  notes  is  the  sound- 
ing of  "  u  "  as  "  o,"  as  in  "  chorch  "  (church),  which  on  top  of 


270     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

the  burred  "r"  is  unique,  and  would  certainly  produce  nos- 
talgia when  heard  by  an  exiled  Northumbrian  as  promptly, 
I  imagine,  as  any  word ;  though  it  might  do  his  heart  even 
more  good  to  hear  a  new  chum  in  Australia  or  Manitoba 
respond  to  a  greeting  with  "  Aa's  aal  reet."  Stone,  so  pro- 
minent an  article  in  Northumbria,  has  a  very  archaic  form : 
"  styen  "  in  some  parts,  in  others  "  steen."  The  "  h  "  is  never 
dropped,  and  is  always  sounded  after  "  w,"  as  it  is  everywhere 
in  the  north,  and  indeed  all  over  Ireland  and  America. 

The  county  subdivides  itself  into  four,  or  indeed  five, 
dialects,  including  the  western  fringe  of  Scottish  and  Cum- 
brian— to  wit,  north  and  south  Northumbrian  ;  Tyneside, 
which  includes  Newcastle ;  a  strip  of  Durham  and  little  more  ; 
and  lastly,  west  Tyne,  centering  in  Hexham.  True  Tyne- 
side is  said  to  have  been  stereotyped  by  the  great  numbers 
of  dalesmen  who  were  driven  down  there  by  local  conges- 
tion, the  suppression  of  raiding,  and  the  development  of  the 
coal  trade.  Whatever  the  strain  that  founded  the  tongue 
which  Geordie  talks,  it  is  far  the  most  uncouth  of  all  to  the 
alien  ear.  It  is  a  masterful  tongue,  too,  that  gives  way  to 
nothing,  but  rather  forces  itself  on  the  alien  workmen.  As 
the  Saxon  miner  often  learns  Welsh  in  the  Glamorgan  mines, 
though  rural  Glamorgan  seldom  even  understand  it,  so  the 
Yorkshireman,  I  take  it,  who  throws  in  his  lot  with  Tyne- 
siders,  is  drawn  irresistibly  to  their  manner  of  speech,  though 
rural  Northumberland  converses  far  more  lucidly.  But  the  few 
haphazard  instances  of  Northumbrian  sounds  I  ventured  to 
notice  are  of  general  application  outside  the  quasi-Scottish  belt, 
and  the  gradual  drifting  into  this  latter,  whether  in  the  staunch 
burr  country  to  the  north  or  over  the  burr  line  to  the  west, 
may  always  serve  to  interest  the  wanderer  who  cares  for  such 
things.  After  all,  education  has  had  more  influence  than  we 
sometimes  admit.  There  is  no  question  that  the  Northumbrian 
hind,  or  the  Cumbrian  statesman,  or  the  Wiltshire  shepherd, 
still  speak  their  vernacular  in  a  fine  and  racy  fashion,  pos- 
sibly even  unintelligible  to  the  Cockney.  But  encounter  a 
veteran  of  four-score  in  a  remote  situation  in  any  of  these 


ALLENDALE  271 

counties,  and  you  will  be  apt  to  find  any  conceit  you  may 
secretly  cherish  in  the  matter  of  vernaculars  rudely  shaken. 
Judging  from  such  experiences,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
if  the  cashier  of  a  Hexham  bank  were  to  find  himself  dis- 
cussing a  financial  accommodation  with  the  shade  of  Frank 
Stokoe,  or  Sim  o'  the  Cathill,  or  Dicky  of  Staward,  or  even 
an  aristocrat  like  Alec  Ridley,  he  would  need  an  interpreter. 
I   have  an  idea  that  even  John   Peel  would  be  tolerably 
incoherent  to  the  modern  of  even  reasonable  acquaintance 
with  current   vernacular.     I   once   spent   an   afternoon   and 
took  a  long  walk  at  Caldbeck  with  his  aged  nephew,  who 
used  to  help  him  with  his  kennel,  and  his  speech,  or,  rather, 
his  handling  of  it,  on  which  I  naturally  hung  with  more 
than  average  attention,  was  of  another  quality  from  that  of 
the  average  Cumbrian  farmer  that  make  Lake  tourists  know. 
Two  miles  above  Staward  the  stream  divides  into  two 
vales,  known  as  the  East  and  West  Allen.     Up  the  former 
lies  the  townlet  of  Allendale,  already  noticed ;  up  the  latter 
are  no  such  collections  of  humanity,  but  only  the  beautiful 
and  leafy  hamlet  of  Whitfield,  after  which  the  deep,  treeless 
vale  carries  a  single  line  of  small  homesteads  till  it  filters 
out  into  high  heather  and   solitude.      Crossing  the  broad- 
backed  ridge  of  cold-looking  farming  lands,  and  traces  of 
lead  workings  between  the  two  Aliens,  as  was  our  hap  one 
sunny  afternoon,  the  prospect  of  Whitfield,  as  we  dropped 
down  to  it  by  several  hundred  feet  of  precipitous  road,  was 
delightful.     For  the  steep  green  slopes  of  the  vale  here  press 
together,  as  if  to  indicate  the  last  stage  of  its  existence,  where 
vale  changes  to  mountain  glen,  and  the  deep  hollow  is  filled 
with  the  luxuriant  foliage  of  ash,  and  oak,  and  beech,  and 
sycamore,  such  as  in  a  highland  country  only  gather  round 
some  ancient  country-seat.     A  graceful  church  spire  springs 
high  above  the  foliage  between  the  thrusting  hills,  and  one 
forgives  its  obvious  lack  of  centuries  in  the  distinction  of  its 
pose.     The  manor-house,  an  old  seat  of  the  Whitfields,  who 
acquired  the  property  from  the  Hexham  monks,  then  of  the 
Ords,  and  now  of  the  Blackett  Ords,  is  buried  in  the  foliage. 


272     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

For  the  rest,  there  is  nothing  but  a  few  cottages  and  the 
mountain  stream,  fresh  from  its  brief  harbourage  of  woodland, 
rushing  under  a  stone  bridge.  It  was  the  Lord  of  Whitfield, 
it  may  be  remembered,  whom  Hobbie  Noble,  that  incorrigible 
freebooter  of  ballad  fame,  rejected  even  of  Bewcastle,  declared 
"  loved  him  not." 

"  For  nae  gear  frae  me  he  e'er  could  keep." 

Leaving  Whitfield  we  ascended  the  vale  by  the  quite 
excellent  road  that  crosses  the  wild  moors  to  Alston,  some 
nine  miles  distant.  It  was  an  afternoon  that  will  abide  in 
my  memory,  for  the  complete  and  impressive  solitude  of 
nearly  the  whole  route,  and  also  for  the  fact  that  the  road 
climbs  steadily  uphill  without  wavering  for  a  moment,  to  the 
fifth  milestone,  to  commence,  almost  immediately,  a  similar 
descent  on  the  Cumbrian  side.  One  of  the  loftiest  and 
loneliest  road  passes  in  England  is  this,  without  a  doubt.  As 
we  breasted  the  long  hill  from  Whitfield  the  sunshine  vanished, 
and  gloomy  clouds,  though  as  yet  sailing  high,  took  posses- 
sion of  the  sky  and  drove  away  the  radiance  that  had  hither- 
to lit  up  the  hills  and  cast  shadows  over  the  vales.  Our  road 
crawled  slowly  up  the  long  steep  above  the  green  but  treeless 
glen  below,  in  whose  hollow  we  could  see  the  bright  streams 
of  the  West  Allen  rippling  down  from  farm  to  farm  till  the 
last  small  modest  homestead,  with  its  stone  wall  enclosures, 
gave  way  to  the  wild.  Long  before  we  had  touched  the 
watershed  we,  too,  were  out  on  the  heather  among  the 
uneasy  grouse,  and  the  intermittent  bleat  of  Cheviot  and 
blackfaced  sheep.  The  inevitable  arrays  of  butts,  which  in 
the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years  have  come  to  strike  a  jarring 
note  of  civilization  and  artificiality  on  so  many  moorland 
scenes,  were  here  and  there.  Elsewhere  beneath  the  dull 
and  now  thickening  clouds  and  the  approach  of  evening,  this 
expanse  of  primitive  upland,  which  broke  away  to  the  south 
and  east  into  rounded  and  cone-shaped  heights,  breathed 
feelingly  in  the  breeze  that  whistled  in  the  rushes  of  the 
spirit  of  solitude.  We  were  virtually  in  the  Pennine  range, 

\ 


ALLENDALE  273 

for  the  moors  around  us  rolled  onward,  till  they  climbed  the 
heights  of  Cross  Fell,  and  looked  right  down  upon  the  Lake 
country.  As  we  topped  the  watershed,  and  began  after  no 
long  time  to  dip  westward,  a  quite  striking  downward  view 
of  the  hill-girdled  hollow,  where  Alston  lay  upon  the  infant 
streams  of  the  South  Tyne,  was  unfolded.  Here  I  am  sure 
we  lost  nothing  by  stormy  skies  and  the  approach  of  evening. 
None  of  those  blunted  but  finely  up-lifted  masses  of  moor 
and  mountain  we  looked  across  to  were  much  over  two 
thousand  feet.  In  the  sunshine  they  would  only  have  been 
hills,  if  shapely  and  distinguished  ones.  In  these  angry 
skies  and  this  atmospheric  gloom,  all  tell-tale  detail  had 
vanished  into  imposing  blurred  and  murky  shapes,  full  of 
mystery,  and  as  big  to  look  at  as  Skiddaw  or  Helvellyn. 
Their  tops,  which  from  this  angle  were  fairly  bold,  opened 
and  shut  in  the  racking  clouds  in  quite  the  spirit  of 
mountain  peaks,  and  as  we  dropped  steadily  down  the  three 
miles  descent  to  where  Alston  lay  invisible,  wedged  in  the 
hollow  somewhere  at  their  feet,  they  seemed  to  mount  yet 
higher  into  the  skies,  till,  without  much  warning,  they  vanished 
altogether  in  gloom,  and  we  entered  this  sequestered  haunt 
of  ancient  cattle-lifters  and  latter-day  cattle-dealers  and  lead 
miners  in  heavy  rain. 

Alston  is  a  Cumbrian  town  all  over.  Any  one  with  the 
faintest  intuition  for  such  things  coming  out  of  Northumber- 
land would  see  at  once  he  was  in  another  region,  though 
actually  but  two  miles  over  the  Border.  The  austerity  of 
the  Northumbrian  street  is  not  here,  for  these  are  altogether 
more  conciliatory,  and  even  picturesque.  Queer  corners  and 
even  irregular  gables  confront  you,  and  the  whitewash  brush, 
more  popular  with  the  Cumbrian,  has  dashed  over  many  a 
house  front,  and  at  least  dispelled  monotony.  My  notions  of 
Alston  had  been  gathered  wholly  in  Cumberland,  where  men 
talk  of  it  as  the  end  of  all  things  Cumbrian,  the  eastern  limit 
of  Joe  Bowman's  most  tremendous  runs  with  his  fell  hounds 
from  the  Ullswater  country.  And  the  origin  of  many  horse 
deals,  creditable  or  otherwise,  for  there  is  a  great  fair  at  Alston. 


274     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

I  seem  to  hear  the  echoes  too  of  various  famous  characters 
hailing  from  here,  in  the  half-forgotten  stories  of  certain  racy 
Cumbrians,  with  whom  I  have  fished  and  smoked  and 
ranged  the  fells  within  years  so  recent  that  I  felt  ashamed  of 
my  haziness,  now  I  was  actually  in  a  place  about  which  I  had 
always  felt  some  curiosity.  In  a  hasty  stroll  about  Alston, 
a  whiff  of  Keswick,  Ambleside,  and  Penrith  came  through 
the  now  fast-falling  rain,  and  it  would  not  be  libellous  to 
suggest  that  the  latter  did  not  detract  from  such  analogous 
features  as  there  might  be. 

We  were  now,  too,  in  the  land  of  becks  and  fells ;  out  of 
the  Saxon,  that  is  to  say,  and  into  the  Norse  country.  There 
are  plenty  of  fells,  to  be  sure,  in  Northumberland,  but  they 
are  nearly  all  along  its  western  edge,  and  the  Scandinavian 
settlements  extended  into  Liddesdale.  But  there  is  only,  I 
believe,  one  beck,  to  wit,  that  rather  famous  one,  the  Wans- 
beck,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  scarcely  any  burns 
in  Cumberland.  Nor  can  any  word  differ  much  more  in  the 
hearing  than  the  burr'n  of  the  Scotsman,  and  the  borcttn  of  the 
Northumbrian,  the  "  ch  "  here  standing  for  a  guttural,  though 
with  but  partial  accuracy,  for  the  quite  indescribable  North- 
umbrian burr.  One  might  well  add,  as  a  third  variety,  the 
burn  of  polite  conventional  speech  which  somehow  always 
sounds  a  little  foolish.  Alston  had  been  celebrating  some 
mild  function  that  day — a  church  bazaar,  I  think — and  the 
rain  had  driven  its  supporters  in  some  strength  into  the  inn 
parlours,  where  both  Cumbrian  and  Northumbrian  speech, 
under  the  gentle  stimulus  of  cheering  tumblers,  was  much  in 
evidence  while  we  awaited  our  train  to  Haltwhistle  and 
Hexham. 


CHAPTER  XII 
NORTH  TYNEDALE 

"  Save  a  fat  horse  and  a  fair  woman, 
Twa  bonnie  dogs  to  kill  a  deer  ; 
But  England  suld  hae  found  me  meat  and  mault, 
Gif  I  had  lived  this  hunderd  year." 

Johnnie  Armstrong  of  Kilnochie, 

SIR  FRANCIS  NORTH,  accompanying  Lord  Keeper 
Guilford  on  the  northern  circuit,  gives  a  racy  picture  of 
Tynedale,  and  their  progress  through  it.  Infested  as  it  is 
with  cattle  thieves,  the  Border  justices  hang  at  another  rate 
altogether  at  their  own  commissions  from  the  more  judicial 
procedure  of  the  assize.  "  Eighteen,"  he  says,  "  were  strung 
up  on  one  single  occasion,  while  a  violent  suspicion  is  next  to 
conviction."  At  Newcastle  assizes,  during  this  circuit,  a  man 
named  Noble  was  arraigned  merely  because  an  unknown 
horse  had  been  seen  grazing  near  his  house,  but  was  acquitted 
to  the  outspoken  disgust  of  the  country  justices  present,  who 
said  he  deserved  hanging  "  on  general  grounds,"  which  they 
regarded,  to  North's  somewhat  amused  amazement,  as  quite 
sufficient  for  so  summary  a  procedure.  While  the  judge  was 
descanting  on  the  entire  lack  of  evidence,  a  Scottish  gentle- 
man and  Border  Commissioner  on  the  bench,  "  made  a  long 
neck  "  towards  him,  and  called  out,  "  My  Lord,  send  him  to 
huzz,  and  ye'll  nae  see  him  mair."  The  Scottish  verdict  of 
"guilty  on  habit  and  repute"  was  good  law  across  the 
Border.  North  goes  on  to  say  that  as  the  Court  journeyed 
to  Hexham,  the  sheriff  supplied  them  all  with  arms  as  well 
as  with  a  knife  and  fork  apiece.  The  road  along  the  Tyne 
was  "hideous  for  its  sharp  turns  and  precipices."  If  the 

275 


judicial  coach  had  not  been  held  up  by  main  force,  it  would 
have  toppled  over.  Finally,  his  lordship  was  forced  to 
descend  and  take  to  the  saddle.  The  tenants  of  the  several 
manors  were  bound  to  guard  the  judges  through  their 
precincts,  "but  not  a  yard  further  would  they  go  to  save 
their  souls ;  comical  sort  of  people  with  long  beards  and 
cloaks,  riding  upon  nags,  as  they  call  their  small  horses. 
Long  broadswords  with  basket  hilts,  hanging  in  broad  belts, 
their  legs  and  swords  almost  touching  the  ground.  Every 
one  in  turn  came  up,  cheek  by  jowl,  and  talked  with  my 
Lord  Judge,  who  was  mightily  pleased  with  their  discourse, 
for  they  were  great  antiquarians  in  their  own  bounds." 
There  is  little  fault  to  be  found  with  the  roads  up  Tynedale 
nowadays,  while  the  descendants  of  the  cattle  thieves — a 
term  applied  to  the  nobler  raider  as  well  as  the  small 
operator — are  prosperous  stock  farmers,  of  prodigious  respect- 
ability, but  not  often  antiquarians. 

Chollerford,  though  five  miles  up  the  river,  for  physical 
reasons  sufficiently  obvious,  was  always  regarded  as  the  gate 
of  North  Tynedale.  The  judicial  capital  of  the  dale,  however, 
from  earliest  times  was  Wark,  a  village  yet  seven  miles  higher 
up.  The  main  road  which  follows  the  river  is  lifted  above, 
and  usually  a  little  aloof  from  it,  though  here  and  there  re- 
vealing fine  stretches  of  water  gleaming  beneath  pendent 
woods.  This  is  as  yet  no  moorland  road,  for  the  narrow 
winding  dale  is  green  with  meadows,  and  sometimes  draped 
in  the  woodlands  that  encompass  famous  and  ancient  seats. 
Haughton  Castle  is  the  first,  rearing  its  hoary  towers  on  a 
woody  brow  above  the  west  bank  of  the  river,  while  Chipchase 
further  on  lies  back  upon  the  opposite  shore.  Before  reach- 
ing Haughton,  too,  from  Chollerford  we  cross  the  Erringburn, 
hurrying  down  from  the  village  of  Errington,  noteworthy  as 
the  nest  of  the  famous  Northumberland  Catholic  family  of 
that  name,  who,  within  easy  memory,  were  still  seated  at 
Beaufront.  Haughton  from  its  high  wooded  perch  shows  a 
fine  expanse  of  grey  tower  and  curtain,  grim,  suggestive,  and 
unadorned.  Though  restored  for  habitation  a  full  century 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  277 

ago,  it  retains  the  outer  shell,  at  any  rate,  of  the  fortress 
raised  by  William  de  Swineburn,  treasurer  to  the  Queen  of 
Scotland  in  the  thirteenth  century,  when  North  Tynedale  owed 
allegiance  to  the  Scottish  Crown.  Its  walls  are  from  eight 
to  ten  feet  thick,  and  with  its  great  size,  its  hoary  massive 
corner  towers,  and  uplifted  situation,  the  mediaeval  character 
is  finely  maintained.  Swinburnes  and  Widdringtons  seemed 
to  have  owned  it  for  most  of  its  active  life.  Among  the 
innumerable  smaller  fortresses  of  that  day  it  was  the  only 
actual  castle  towards  Scotland,  and  the  frequent  duty  of  its 
owners  was  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  pele  towers  of  their  less 
important  neighbours,  who,  if  Jedburgh  and  Liddesdale  did 
not  seem  for  the  moment  raidable,  were  always  prepared  for  a 
foray  into  Durham  or  south-east  Northumberland.  Many  a 
moss-trooper  has  languished  in  its  dungeons.  A  story  runs 
concerning  Sir  William  Swinburne,  who,  during  the  Border 
wars  and  turmoils  of  the  sixteenth  century,  had  captured  a 
chief  of  the  Armstrongs,  and  consigned  him  to  subterranean 
durance.  But  himself  summoned  away  to  give  evidence  at 
the  trial  of  Lord  Dacre,  an  active  warden  of  the  Middle 
March  who  had  fallen  foul  of  Wolsey,  he  forgot  all  about  the 
hapless  Armstrong,  and  only  remembered  while  he  was  at 
York  that  no  orders  had  been  given  for  feeding  him.  Seized 
with  a  remorse  that  was  quite  creditable  for  his  situation  and 
period,  he  hurried  home  again  and  rode  with  bloody  spur 
and  loose  rein  to  Durham,  where  his  horse  fell  dead  under 
him.  Mounting  another  he  reached  Haughton  that  night,  only 
to  discover  the  wretched  riever  a  corpse,  having  gnawed  some 
of  the  flesh  from  his  own  arm  in  the  agonies  of  his  hunger. 

Chipchase,  the  ancient  seat  of  the  Herons,  who,  like  the 
Swinburnes,  were  conspicuous  as  leaders  throughout  the  whole 
tale  of  Border  story,  is  three  miles  beyond  and  of  altogether 
another  type,  though  quite  as  interesting.  Here  we  have  the 
original  Heron  pele  tower,  and  a  very  imposing  one,  a  verit- 
able keep  in  fact,  tacked  on  to  the  most  beautiful  specimen  of 
Jacobean  manor-house  in  Northumberland,  built  by  Cuthbert 
Heron  in  1621.  The  old  tower,  which  has  been  preserved  by 


278     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

its  massive  stone  roof  containing  some  flags  six  feet  in  length, 
has  lost  little  but  its  battlements  which  projected  some  two  feet 
on  still  perfect  corbels.  At  each  corner  is  a  circular  turret 
machicolated  like  the  battlements  for  the  better  precipitating 
of  boiling  water  and  heavy  stones  on  the  besiegers'  heads.  In 
front  of  the  pointed  doorway  the  remains  of  the  oak  portcullis 
are  still  embedded  :  I  believe  the  only  instance  of  its  kind  in 
England.  The  adjoining  manor-house  must  have  been  a 
unique  spectacle  when  first  erected  in  this  wild  country,  and 
a  matter  of  astonishment  to  the  gentry  of  the  pele  towers 
above,  "  honest  men  all  but  for  a  little  shifting  for  their  living," 
as  a  contemporary  play  delicately  puts  it  Above  the 
entrance  is  the  Heron  shield,  carrying  three  of  the  long- 
necked  birds  whose  name  the  family  bear.  Above  the  porch 
is  a  stone  bear,  and  elsewhere  are  many  others  holding  the 
shields,  much  obliterated  by  time,  of  various  Northumbrian 
stocks.  Some  kind  of  a  manor-house  had  been  built  out  from 
the  tower  before  the  beautiful  Jacobean  building  that  we  see 
before  us  now  was  raised  by  Cuthbert  Heron.  For  in  the 
sixteenth  century  this  castle  was  regarded  as  the  most  roomy 
garrison  for  the  fifty  light  horsemen  that  acted  in  normal 
times  as  a  kind  of  mounted  police  under  the  keeper  of  Tyne- 
dale,  who  was  frequently  a  Heron  or  a  Swinburne. 

A  mile  or  two  beyond  Chipchase  the  road  strides  the 
river  by  an  unromantic  iron  bridge  to  Wark,  an  ancient  and 
substantial  little  village,  whose  former  importance  as  the 
centre  of  the  law  in  a  lawless  country  has  stimulated  those 
curious  legends  of  far-extended  vanished  streets,  and  a  great 
population,  that  survived  in  so  many  places  of  the  kind.  The 
Mote-hill  near  by  is  thought  to  have  been  the  scene  of  legisla- 
tion in  Saxon  times,  but  it  is  of  quite  sufficient  interest  to 
know  that  the  Scottish  justices  in  the  thirteenth  century  sat 
here,  whose  reports,  as  already  mentioned,  are  still  in  the  Re- 
cord Office.  The  late  Dr.  Charlton  collated  and  printed  many 
of  these,  and  to  lovers  of  the  past  they  are  intensely  interest- 
ing, telling  how  land  was  cultivated,  what  rents  were  paid, 
who  were  the  principal  people,  and  of  what  like  were  all  their 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  279 

small  disputes,  and  how  flowed  the  minor  current  of  their 
daily  lives  outside  the  stir  and  turmoil  of  its  more  serious 
exploits.  In  these  early  days  we  find  the  de  Bellinghams, 
now  represented  by  the  Castle  Bellingham  family  in  Ireland, 
sheriffs  of  Tynedale  and  the  chief  magnates  of  the  county. 
Next  came  the  Swinburnes,  who  still  own  property  here,  and 
the  Charltons,  the  chief  of  the  four  greynes  of  North  Tynedale, 
who  also,  of  course,  are  still  here. 

De  Bellingham,  in  these  records,  is  at  continual  odds  with 
the  Abbot  of  Jedworth  or  the  Prior  of  Hexham,  in  the  matter 
of  boundaries,  grazing  rights,  or  the  like,  on  account  of  his 
negligence  in  keeping  fences  in  repair  and  ditches  open.  The 
clerics  complain  that  their  stock  in  consequence  stray  on  to 
his  land,  whereupon  he  instantly  impounds  them.  De  Bel- 
lingham retaliates  by  summoning  them  to  show  cause  why 
he  should  not  graze  two  mares  and  their  foals  for  two  years 
in  the  abbot's  park  at  Ellingham,  as  the  right  had  been 
granted  him  in  the  late  King  Henry's  time.  The  disputes 
are  at  length  settled  by  a  long  and  most  precise  agreement, 
given  here  verbatim. ,  Another  suit,  as  curious,  is  a  right  held 
from  his  grandfather  by  a  plaintiff  of  pasturing  his  flocks  just 
so  far  beyond  the  Timbershaw  burn  as  they  could  return  from 
in  a  single  day,  but  not  of  spending  the  night  there. 

John  of  Hawelton  and  Thomas  of  Thirlwall  are  arraigned 
for  a  much  more  serious  business,  namely,  that  of  plundering 
the  town  of  Wark  of  thirty-nine  oxen,  eighteen  cows,  fifteen 
other  cattle,  and  two  hundred  sheep,  and  driving  them  to  the 
former's  park  at  Sewingshields  on  the  wall,  and  there  detain- 
ing them  against  the  king's  peace. 

Townships  where  robberies  occurred  were  bound  to 
pursue  the  offenders  with  hue  and  cry,  and  several  entries 
occur  where  for  failure  in  this  they  are  "  placed  at  the  mercy 
of  the  Crown."  There  are  entries  even  then  of  private  raids 
from  Scotland,  William  de  Fenwick  of  Simonburn  losing  all 
his  cattle  thus,  and  being  himself  bound.  Some  other  reivers, 
having  rifled  the  house  of  Robert  Unthank  in  his  absence, 
shut  up  his  daughter  in  a  chest  to  avoid  pursuit.  Several 


280     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

clergymen  were  convicted  of  burglary   and   cattle  stealing. 
There  were  odd  names  about  here,  too  :  Adam  Aydrunken, 
for  instance,   upset  his  boat  in  the  Tyne,  and  accidentally 
drowned    his    wife    Beatrice.      Cecilia,    the    wife    of   John 
Unkuthman   (uncouthman),    cut   her    throat   with   a   razor. 
Perhaps  she  could  no  longer  stand  his  manners  or  bear  the 
weight  of  her  married  name.     Another  unfortunate  person 
figures  as  Adam-with-the-nose.     The  coroner  was   a  great 
autocrat,  and  frequently  executed  persons  as  well  as  sat  on 
their  bodies.     Sometimes  communities  dispensed  even  with 
this   officer,  and  decapitated   malefactors  before  his  arrival, 
being  then  "placed   at  the  mercy   of  the    Crown."      Even 
deaths  by  accident  are  carefully  reported,  and  there  are  many 
cases  of  punishment   for  fishing  in   other  people's   waters 
without  leave,  and  for  killing  salmon  in  the  close  season, 
which  was  strictly  laid  down.     The  suits  concerning  disputed 
lands,  too,  are  frequent.     One  man,  again,  was  imprisoned  by 
the  owners  of  a  dog  for  shooting  it  with  an  arrow  in  self- 
defence,  and  claiming  damages  for  such  detention,  got  ten 
marks.    There   are   a  great   many   murder  cases  recorded. 
Most  of  the  culprits  fly  the  country,  upon  which  their  goods 
are  confiscated,  but  when  caught  they  are  decapitated.     Here 
are  some  of  them  :  Thomas  Spalefot,  John  Dulphin-the-drit, 
Elyas  Blessedblod,  and   William  Titmouse.     The   names  of 
individuals  are  returned  from  time  to  time  who  were  frozen 
to  death  on  the  moors.     The  parson  of  Corbridge  was  con- 
victed of  burglary  and  imprisoned  at  Wark,  but  he  escaped, 
and  took  sanctuary   at   Simonburn  ;  whereupon  his  brother 
parson  of  Warden,  ashamed  of  his  cloth  no  doubt,  handed 
him  over  to  the  Bishop  of  Durham,  in  whose  prison  he  died. 
How  anybody  lived  in  a  mediaeval  prison,  even  a  bishop's,  is 
a  marvel.     So  much  for  the  quieter  and  purely  domestic  side 
of  life  in  Tynedale  during  Edward  the  First's  reign.    The 
Manor   of   Wark   belonged  to  the  Radcliffes  prior  to  the 
'fifteen,  who  built  a  house  long  vanished  on  the  Mote-hill. 

Half  a  mile  from  the  village,  at  Houxtys  on  the  Belling- 
ham  Road,  Mr.  Abel  Chapman,  author,  among  other  works, 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  281 

of   "Bird   Life    of   the    Borders,"   and   well    known    as    a 
naturalist,  sportsman,  wild-fowler,  and  big  game  hunter,  is 
seated  in  a  house  full  of  trophies  from  lands  remote.     The 
Tyne,  still  a  broad  and  lusty  river  with  the  dark  hue  of  the 
peat  moss  just  tinging  its  clear  streams,  sweeps  out  of  the 
Duke's  woods  below  the  confluence  of  the  Rede,  and  curves 
finely  round  the  meadows  below  the  house  ;  while  the  Houxty 
burn,  a  lusty  stream  from  the  moors,  comes  pouring  down 
through  pine  woods  beside  it     There  is  no  doubt  about  the 
salmon  in  the  North  Tyne,  two  or  three   favourite  pools, 
within  sight  of  the  windows,  yield  their  annual  tribute ;  and, 
indeed,  for  twenty  odd  miles  up  from  its  mouth  at  Warden, 
to  Falstone,  beyond  Bellingham,  the  salmon  fishing  is  every- 
where excellent  when  the  water  is  right.     The  bull  trout  too, 
the  salmo  eriox,  running  sometimes  to  five  or  six  pounds,  or 
even  more,  loves  the  North  Tyne,  and,  indeed,  affects  North- 
umbrian rivers  more  generally  than  those  of  any  other  county. 
As  for  the  brown  trout,  he  too  flourishes  as  in  so  perfect  a 
river,  well  preserved  almost  from  its  source  to  its  mouth,  he 
should  do.    April  is  his  month  of  action,  however,  and  the 
March  brown  his  special  fancy.      No  rise,  even  of  Mayfly  in 
a  chalk  stream,  provokes  the  scene  of  orgie  that  the  smaller 
insect,  with  its  mottled  brown  wings,  occasions  in  the  first 
fortnight  of  April  on  the  mountain  rivers  that  hatch  it  freely, 
for  the  obvious  reason  that  the  fish  are  smaller,  more  hungry, 
and  much  more  numerous.     Here,  too,  on  the  hill  slope,  and 
in  the  valley,  the  owner  has   planted  and   contrived   little 
harbourages  for  the  better  inducement  of  rarer  birds  to  set 
up  house  in  the  breeding  season.     From  here  to  Bellingham, 
four  miles  beyond,  the  road  still  keeps  to  the  west  bank  of 
the  river,  though  rising  and  falling  over  the  hill  slopes  at 
some  height  above  the  valley.     The  landscape,  too,  begins  to 
expand.     The  wild  moorland,  which  has  hitherto  been  more 
or  less  concealed  by  the   bosky  entanglements  of  an  old 
river-side  habitation,  now  shows   up   its  long    ridges    and 
rounded  summits  on  every  skyline.     Far  below,  among  the 
valley    foliage,   is    Lee    Hall,   where   poor   Mr.    Lowes    of 


282     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Willimoteswyke,  it  may  be  remembered,  was  chained  to  his 
captor  and  rival's  kitchen  fireplace.  Just  beyond  it,  in  more 
woods,  is  Reedsmouth,  where  a  Charlton  is  still  seated,  and 
the  little  railway  that  follows  up  the  east  bank  of  the  North 
Tyne  from  Hexham,  on  its  long,  tortuous  route  through  the 
passes  to  Scotland,  throws  out  a  branch  which  climbs  hence, 
away  over  the  moors  to  Rothbury.  Here,  too,  as  the  name 
implies,  the  Rede  of  bloody  memory,  and  renowned  in  Border 
song  and  story,  drops  quietly,  with  innocent  prattle,  over  its 
narrow  stoney  bed  into  the  Tyne,  a  little  harmless-looking 
trout  stream  across  which  one  may  with  ease  cast  a  fly. 

But  from  up  here  on  the  highway,  which  shoots  onward 
now  through  many-acred  bare  enclosures,  screened  betimes 
by  belts  of  fir,  and  lying  at  the  feet  of  moors,  these  details  are 
muffled  from  sight  in  the  abundance  of  their  own  foliage. 
The  eye  is  carried  forwards,  rather,  to  where  Bellingham,  the 
modern  successor  of  Wark,  in  the  metropolitan  honours  of 
North  Tynedale,  lies  picturesquely  in  the  heart  of  the  vale  two 
miles  away.  The  crossing  of  the  lofty  stone  bridge  of  four 
arches  that  lifts  the  highway  over  the  river  into  the  outskirts  of 
the  little  town,  would  at  once  predispose  any  one  in  its  favour. 
For  the  Tyne,  expanded  here  to  a  breadth  of  perhaps  eighty 
yards,  comes  smoothly  down  out  of  fringing  woods,  and, 
stirred  into  life  by  the  many  buttresses  of  the  bridge,  hurries 
onward  with  broken  surface,  beneath  still  hanging  woods  on 
one  side,  and  grass  paddocks  and  orchards  on  the  other.  I 
had  stood  here  a  fortnight  previously,  and  watched  a  half- 
flood  hurling  ten  feet  of  black  water  from  bank  to  bank 
against  these  same  buttresses.  But  that  was  in  mid-August, 
and  it  was  the  last  of  the  month  when  I  shifted  my  abode  to 
the  pastoral  seclusion  of  Bellingham,  and  what  proved  to  be 
a  long  autumn  drought  had  just  set  in.  The  gravelly  bottom 
was  plain  enough  now  beneath  the  dimpled  amber  streams. 
It  was  the  week,  too,  of  the  full  harvest  moon,  and  we 
strolled  out  betimes  when  night  and  quiet  had  sunk  upon 
the  mild  stir  of  the  village  half  a  mile  away.  Here,  leaning 
on  the  central  parapet  of  the  lofty  bridge,  we  could  watch 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  283 

the  moonlight  streaming  over  one-half  of  the  mysterious 
surface  of  the  waters,  throwing  their  woodland  screen  into 
black  relief  against  the  sky,  or  the  distant  moors,  now  relit 
with  almost  the  refulgence  of  day.  For  deep  and  shallow  at 
this  hour  know  no  difference ;  all  alike  were  a  mere  mirror 
for  the  play  of  the  moonlight,  or  the  sullen  shadow  of  the 
woods.  At  intervals  a  salmon,  or  bull  trout,  impatient,  no 
doubt,  of  the  shrinking  waters  that  checked  his  upward 
progress,  would  fling  himself  into  the  darkness  somewhere 
below,  and  fall  again  with  a  resounding  splash;  or,  anon, 
some  complaining  sheep,  just  driven  from  distant  mountain 
pastures  to  the  cramped  quarters  of  a  butcher's  paddock, 
would  wake  again  the  echoes  of  the  still  and  breathless  night. 
Bellingham  itself  is  a  cheerful  little  oasis  in  the  waste, 
though  not,  of  course,  so  lively  as  in  the  brave  days  of  old 
when  all  the  honest  men  around  "did  a  little  shifting  for 
their  living,"  and  were  the  despair  of  kings,  commissioners, 
and  march  wardens.  It  is  no  more  than  a  considerable 
village  straggling  around  open  spaces  and  along  a  wide 
street  which,  together  with  its  beautiful  situation,  makes  it, 
if  not  precisely  picturesque,  extremely  suggestive  and  cha- 
racteristic. It  is  full  of  dogs,  and  generally  more  or  less  full 
of  sheep — that  useful  animal  in  this  country  holding  an  easy 
lead  in  its  interests  and  products.  There  is  one  excellent 
inn,  at  least,  equal  to  any  reasonable  demands  of  bed  and 
board,  and  a  wonderful  little  old  church  of  eleventh-century 
date.  There  is  a  mound,  too,  outside  the  village,  on  which 
stood  the  keep  of  the  Bellinghams  who,  in  the  thirteenth 
and  fourteenth  centuries,  one  suspects  kept  better  order  in 
North  Tynedale  than  was  known  for  the  next  few  centuries, 
when  the  "four  greynes"  had  it  more  to  themselves.  The 
Hareshaw  burn  runs  through  the  village,  and  just  outside  it 
emerges  from  a  wooded  gorge  which,  after  a  mile  or  two  of 
beautiful  windings  through  a  ravine  clad  in  foliage,  ends  in  a 
quite  respectable  waterfall,  where  the  stream  plunges  from 
the  open  moor  into  a  basin  surrounded  by  curious  plateaus 
of  limestone  overhung  by  cavernous  cliffs.  This  two-mile 


284     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

walk  would  make  the  fortune  of  any  accessible  haunt.  If 
such  a  place  were  physically  possible  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  or 
Surrey,  it  would  be  regarded  as  a  prodigious  natural  asset, 
and  would  have  been  celebrated  in  acres  of  print.  Belling- 
ham,  which  does  a  mild  tourist  business  in  the  shape  of  a 
brake  or  two  from  Hexham  now  and  again,  has  cut  a  path 
to  Hareshaw  linn,  and  it  figures  largely  in  the  guide-books 
and  on  picture  postcards.  This  prejudiced  me  against  it, 
not  because  I  doubted  its  merits,  but  from  the  fact  that 
wooded  gorges  of  beauty,  rapids,  and  waterfalls  are  common 
to  all  mountain  streams  towards  their  source,  and  familiar, 
though  none  the  less  endeared,  to  those  who  frequent  such 
waters.  But  I  prefer  those  that  have  not  paths  made  up 
them  on  account  of  their  propinquity  to  places  where  their 
inspection  plays  a  merely  incidental  part  between  sumptuous 
feasts  for  the  wonderment  of  persons  who,  unfamiliar  with 
the  mazes  of  mountain  streams,  hold  these  spots  as  special 
freaks  of  nature.  But  the  Hareshaw  dene,  though  with  no 
pretensions  to  grandeur,  as  a  pure  study  in  foliage  and 
tumbling  water  for  a  prolonged  distance,  is  quite  exquisite, 
and  though  it  has  a  path  furnished  with  rustic  bridges  con- 
trived up  it,  being  otherwise  impenetrable  with  dry  feet,  I 
doubt  if  there  is  anything  better  of  the  kind  in  any  of  the 
beautiful  burns  that  feed  the  North  Tyne.  Moreover,  the  linn 
which  brings  the  pilgrim  to  a  halt  at  its  upper  limit  falls 
through  a  gap  in  a  precipice  of  some  hundred  feet  high  into  a 
sunless  pool,  girt  about  with  beetling  walls  of  rock  hollowed  by 
Nature  into  fantastic  caverns,  and  feathered  far  above  against 
the  skyline  with  birch  and  rowan,  witch,  elm,  oak,  and  ash. 

Bellingham,  by  the  way,  like  all  place-names  of  similar 
termination  in  the  north-east  from  the  Firth  of  Forth  to  the 
Tyne,  is  pronounced  Bellinjam.  This  is  held  as  a  mark  of 
pure  Anglo-Saxon  occupation,  and  practically  ceases  on 
touching  the  Scandinavian  settlements  of  Durham,  Cumber- 
land, and  part  of  Roxburghshire.  In  ancient  documents  such 
places  are  often  actually  spelt  with  a  "  j."  Bellingham  church, 
dedicated  to  St.  Cuthbert,  is  a  wonderful  little  relic  of  Norman 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  285 

art,  dating  from  the  close  of  the  eleventh  century.  It  has  no 
tower,  but  its  west  end  is  sheared  up  by  two  huge  buttresses. 
Its  roof,  however,  is  its  glory,  being,  I  believe,  unique,  and 
consisting  of  heavy  flags  of  stone  laid  on  stone  ribs,  for 
nothing  inflammable  was  of  the  least  use  in  ancient  Belling- 
ham.  The  interior  is  quite  plain,  with  narrow  Norman 
windows  in  the  thick  walls,  and  a  small  chantry  to  the 
Bellingham  family.  The  churchyard  lies  finely  poised  above 
the  Tyne,  which  riots  on  a  rugged  bed  beneath,  while  ex- 
posing glimpses  of  the  quieter  stretch  above,  with  the  grey 
arches  of  the  bridge  and  the  abounding  foliage  behind  and 
around  it  shadowed  on  the  stream.  Here  are  mortuary 
slabs  and  monuments  of  generation  after  generation  of 
Ridleys,  Robsons,  Dodds,  Hedleys,  Halls,  Dixons,  Nichol- 
sons, Charltons,  and  occasionally  some  other  one.  As  almost 
everywhere  in  Northumberland,  the  later  Georgian  passion 
is  strong  here  for  decorating  tombs  with  the  heads  of  either 
truculent  or  inane  cherubims,  and  yet  more  with  crude 
representations  of  hour-glasses,  scissors,  hammers,  crossbones, 
and  such  other  emblems  of  the  occupant's  trade,  or  of  the 
brief  tenure  and  uncertainty  of  mortal  life,  is  conspicuous. 
Bellingham  church  has  seen  some  strange  things  in  its  eight 
centuries  of  existence.  Its  little  chancel  was  twice  gutted  by 
the  Scots,  while  the  nave  was  constantly  used  as  a  fortress. 
In  the  time  of  Queen  Anne,  William  Charlton,  of  the  Bower 
and  Reedsmouth,  a  somewhat  heady  and  prominent  squire, 
usually  known  as  "Bowrie,"  found  himself  constrained  to 
absence  from  divine  service  for  a  cause  in  which  grim  humour, 
if  such  it  were,  was  carried  beyond  the  limit  of  endurance. 
For  it  so  happened  that  Bowrie  and  one  of  the  Widdringtons 
fell  into  a  grand  quarrel  over  a  horse  at  a  race-meeting  held 
near  Bellingham,  and  adjourned  to  settle  their  differences  at 
a  spot  still  pointed  out  close  to  the  village.  Bowrie  there 
slew  his  opponent,  and  then  rode  for  his  life  to  a  friend's 
house  near  Warden,  where  he  lay  concealed,  though  ulti- 
mately receiving  the  queen's  pardon.  In  the  mean  time 
they  had  buried  his  victim,  not  merely  inside  Bellingham 


286     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

church,  but  before  Bowrie's  pew  door,  under  the  inscription, 
"The  Burial-place  of  Henry  Widdrington,  of  Rutland,  gentle- 
man, who  was  killed  by  William  Charlton,  of  Reedsmouth, 
Feb.  23,  1711."  It  is  there  yet,  but  decently  obscured  by 
more  recently  alterations  in  pews.  Bowrie,  of  course,  could 
never  again  come  to  'church,  as  may  be  readily  imagined. 
He  went  out  in  the  'fifteen,  and  remained  so  staunch  a 
Jacobite  that  his  friends  got  him  imprisoned  as  a  precaution 
before  the  'forty-five.  He  left  no  legitimate  children,  but 
three  natural  daughters,  who  seem  to  have  been  well  reared, 
however,  as  Catholics  and  decently  endowed.  For  in  1780, 
on  the  relaxation  of  the  penal  laws,  when  George  the  Third 
was  first  prayed  for  in  the  Catholic  chapels,  the  old  ladies  at 
the  first  utterance  of  the  prayer  at  once  left  the  chapel  at 
Hexham — a  manoeuvre  they  regularly  executed  to  the  end  of 
their  lives.  A  letter  extant  in  the  family,  says  Bowrie's 
collateral  descendant  Dr.  Charlton,  alludes  to  him  as  "all 
wayes  vearry  a-Bousiffe  and  scornful  to  his  brother  of 
Heleyside  and  would  a-made  him  foudelled  and  sould  him 
deare  Bargains  and  abused  him  when  he  had  done." 

Speaking  of  sword  play,  one  of  the  Milburnes  having 
fallen  out  with  some  party  of  another  name,  they  had  stripped 
to  their  shirts  with  a  view  to  fighting  it  out,  according  to 
custom,  in  the  main  street  of  Bellingham,  when  the  first- 
named  called  to  his  wife,  "  Wife,  bring  me  a  clean  sark,  it 
sail  niver  be  said  that  the  bluid  o'  the  Milburnes  ran  down 
upon  foul  linen."  There  is  no  burking  the  fact  that  the 
hardy  people  of  the  North  Tyne  and  Rede  were  commonly 
known  and  generally  recorded  in  official  communications  as 
"The  thieves  of  Tynedale."  Even  when  a  muster  of  the 
north  for  a  descent  on  Scotland  is  particularized  on  paper, 
both  horse  and  foot  from  here  are  scheduled  under  the  head- 
ing of  "  Tynedale  thieves."  In  the  sixteenth  century,  the 
North  Tyne  alone,  from  Wark  to  Falstone,  then  the  limit  of 
habitation,  and  not  over  a  dozen  miles  in  length,  could  turn 
out  two  hundred  horse  and  four  hundred  foot  armed  with 
steel  cap,  jack  or  breastplate,  spear  and  sword,  and  never 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  287 

anywhere  in  the  world,  I  suppose,  were  horse  and  foot  more 
ready  to  turn  out  on  the  slightest  provocation.  If  such  a  label 
on  an  army  list  sounds  jocosely  libellous,  we  may  remember 
that  the  Highland  clans  were  classified  by  their  lowland 
neighbours  in  precisely  the  same  uncomplimentary  fashion. 
It  may  be  even  doubted  if  such  a  definition  were  held  in  any 
sort  of  dishonour,  or  sounded  to  the  Tynedaler  as  it  reads  to 
us  now  in  cold  print.  Lord  Macaulay  roused  great  and  just 
indignation  in  North  Tynedale  for  representing  the  conditions 
of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  as  still  existing 
there,  and  of  the  people  as  savages,  "  Within  the  memory  of 
living  men,"  whereas  the  disarmament  of  the  country  after  the 
'fifteen  is  a  reasonable  landmark  from  which  to  date  a  general 
acquiescence  in  law  and  order.  Prior  to  that  the  burgesses 
of  Newcastle  were  from  time  to  time  forbidden  to  take 
apprentices  from  these  dales,  so  great  was  the  fear  of  them. 

Sir  Robert  Bowes'  survey  of  1542  is  a  well-known  and 
valuable  account  of  the  country.  "  The  houses,"  he  says, 
"  were  much  set  on  either  side  of  the  North  Tyne  and  other 
little  brooks  descending  into  it,  in  strong  places,  by  nature  of 
the  ground,  and  of  mosses  and  morasses.  The  narrow  glens 
had  been  further  strengthened  by  the  trunks  of  trees  thrown 
across  them,  and  the  headsmen  of  them  have  very  strong 
houses,  the  outer  walls  of  great  swair  oak  trees  strongly 
bound  together  with  great  tenons  of  the  same,  so  thickly 
morticed  that  it  will  be  hard  without  great  labour  to  cast 
down  any  of  the  said  houses  ;  walls  and  roofs  covered  with 
turf  and  earth,  so  they  will  rarely  burn.  In  such  places, 
almost  inaccessible,  the  said  Tindaills  do  much  rejoice  and 
embolden  themselves." 

He  goes  on  to  say  that  a  number  of  houses  would  be  set 
together,  so  that  an  attack  on  one  may  warn  all  the  residue, 
"  upon  any  scrimmage  made  within  any  part  of  Tyndaill, 
forthwith  the  outcry  is  so  raised  both  by  men  and  women, 
that  the  country  will  be  warned  and  assembled  to  know  the 
cause  thereof,  and  if  it  be  a  quarrel  of  any  one  of  them 
against  a  true  man,  pursuing  after  his  goods,  spoiled  or 


288     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

stolen,  they  will  take  one  part  and  maintain  such  cause 
as  a  common  matter,  so  that  for  dread  of  this  almost,  no 
man  dare  follow  his  goods  into  the  said  country  of  Tyndaill." 
Few  small  stone  towers  or  pele  houses,  afterwards  so  numerous, 
had  yet  apparently  been  erected  above  the  Chipchase.  > 

In  a  second  report,  eight  years  later,  he  enlarges  still 
further  on  the  wildness,  disorders,  and  misdemeanours  of  the 
"North  Tyndaills."  He  admits  that  there  were  certain 
headsmen  of  the  sundry  "  greynes  "  who  did  not  steal  them- 
selves, but  they  protected  those  who  did,  and  received  part 
of  the  stolen  goods,  and,  in  short,  did  everything  to  prevent 
the  king's  writ  having  any  effect  whatever.  If  any  true  men 
in  England  could  track  their  goods  into  Tyne  or  Redesdale, 
Bowes  writes  that  they  would  always  prefer  to  compound  for 
a  partial  return  of  them  than  to  proceed  to  extremities,  for  if 
a  thief  of  any  great  name  or  "  kindred  were  executed,  the 
whole  of  his  name  put  the  suitor  at  deadly  feud,"  or,  in  other 
words,  his  life  was  not  worth  a  month's  purchase. 

In  the  same  century  Lord  Dacre,  who  was  for  a  time 
Keeper  of  Tynedale,  writes  long  letters  to  Wolsey,  of  these 
irrepressible  reivers  of  Tyne  and  Rede,  quaint  and  almost 
pathetic  apologies  for  his  impotency  to  capture  these  elusive 
and  audacious  souls,  who  "  commit  haynous  murders,  robberies 
and  ryottes,"  they  attack  his  servants,  and  rescue  those  of 
their  kin  he  has  succeeded  in  capturing,  and  it  is  affirmed,  so 
he  declares,  that  "  some  gentlemen  are  the  doers,  and  some 
the  receivers  of  the  said  detestable  actes."  Even  after  he  had 
succeeded  in  arresting  "  ten  persons  of  the  moost  princepall 
and  chefe  in  Redeshall,"  and  locked  them  up  in  the  castle  of 
Harbottle  on  the  Coquet,  and  then  with  the  bailiffs  of  the 
Shire  and  eighty  of  his  own  horsemen  essayed  to  remove 
them  to  Rothbury,  his  force  was  set  upon,  the  bailiff  of 
Morpeth  and  many  others  killed,  the  prisoners  rescued  and 
carried  off  to  Scotland.  The  Bishop  of  Carlisle,  too,  writes 
to  Wolsey :  "  There  is  more  theft  and  extortion  by  English 
thieves  than  by  all  the  Scots  in  Scotland."  After  enumerating 
the  woes  of  low-lying,  Cumberland,  he  declares  it  is  worse 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  289 

at  Hexham,  where,  every  market  day,  a  hundred  strong 
thieves  are  in  attendance,  and  though  the  poor  men  and 
gentlemen  see  them  that  did  rob  them,  they  neither  dare 
complain  of  them  by  name  nor  say  one  word  to  them. 
"  They  take  all  ther  cattell  and  horse,  their  corn  as  they 
carrye  yt  to  sow,  or  to  the  mill  to  grynde,  and  at  the  houses 
they  bedd  them  delyver  what  they  have,  or  they  shall  be 
fyred  and  bornt." 

The  great  Earl  of  Surrey,  the  victor  of  Flodden,  writes  to 
Henry  the  Eighth  a  long  list  of  outrages,  "mooste  humble 
beseeching  your  Grace  too  loke  upon  this  pore  countre  which 
by  the  contynell  murders  and  theftes  comitted  by  Tyndale 
and  Ridsdale  men  and  others  of  Northumberland  was  neer 
brought  to  utter  confusion."  The  king,  partly  no  doubt  as 
a  distraction  and  carrying  on  a  sort  of  informal  feud  with 
Scotland,  let  loose  the  dales  like  greyhounds  from  the  leash 
over  the  Scottish  border  under  Sir  Ralph  Fenwick  of  Walling- 
ton  and  Sir  William  Heron  of  Chipchase. 

It  was  now  King  James  the  Fifth's  turn  to  anathematize 
our  Bellingham  friends  in  more  quaint  and  querulous  Saxon. 
"  The  greatest  of  all  attemptes,"  he  writes,  "  done  against  our 
lieges  during  the  hell  war  has  been  committed  upon  our 
middle  Marches  by  certaine  Zoure  legys  of  the  surnames  of 
Dodds,  Charltons  and  Milburnes  under  the  care  of  Schir 
Rauf  Fenwick."  But  the  dalesmen  that  followed  Fenwick  so 
readily  against  their  hereditary  foe,  turned  on  him  a  few 
months  later  without  the  slightest  hesitation,  when  he  came 
with  eighty  horsemen  and  occupied  Tarset  Tower,  just  above 
Bellingham,  with  a  view  to  capturing  a  misbehaving  Ridley. 
William  Charlton  on  this  occasion,  with  two  hundred  men, 
"sworne  uppon  a  book  always  to  take  hys  parte,"  set  on 
Fenwick  with  his  royal  garrison  and  "  chased  him  out  of 
Tynedaill  to  his  greate  reproache." 

Lord  Dacre,  however,  swiftly  revenged  this  insult  to  the 
king,  and  seizing  several  Charltons  and  Robsons,  executed 
some  of  them  at  Bellingham,  an  act  with  which  the  king  was 
more  pleased,  Wolsey  wrote,  than  anything  Dacre  had  yet  done 


£90     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Later  on  we  find  the  men  of  the  Tyne  and  Rede  combining 
with  some  of  their  Scottish  neighbours  and  enemies  of 
Liddesdale  in  a  big  raid  through  Northumberland  to  the 
very  gates  of  Newcastle,  firing  towns,  killing  many  people, 
and  driving  away  every  animal  that  could  walk.  This  was 
insupportable  for  even  those  times.  The  proclamation  is 
preserved  which  Ralph  Fenwick,  bailiff  of  Tynedale  under 
Lord  Dacre's  orders,  then  Warden  of  the  Middle  March, 
delivered  at  Bellingham,  enjoining  every  man  in  the  dale  to 
appear  at  Wark  and  give  security  on  peril  of  his  life.  The 
thunders  of  the  Church,  too,  were  invoked  upon  them ;  for 
Wolsey  laid  an  interdict  on  the  Tynedale  churches,  and  the 
Archbishop  of  Glasgow  did  the  like  for  Liddesdale,  and 
excommunicated  the  more  enterprising  of  its  inhabitants. 
The  archbishop's  language  was  calculated  to  congeal  the 
blood  of  the  doughtiest  riever  who  had  any  fear  of  God  left 
in  him.  He  prayed  that  "  all  the  malesouns  and  waresouns 
that  ever  gat  warldie  creatur  sen  the  begynning  of  the  warlde 
to  *  this  hour  mot  licht  apon  yaim."  After  this  and  many 
other  gruesome  anticipations  his  Grace  goes  on  to  curse  the 
Borderers'  heads,  the  hairs  of  their  heads,  their  face,  their  eyes, 
their  mouth,  their  nose,  their  tongue,  their  teeth,  their  breast, 
their  heart,  their  stomach,  their  belly,  their  back,  their 
arms,  their  legs,  their  hands,  and,  to  resume  the  vernacular, 
"  their  feet  and  every  ilk  part  of  their  body,  fra  the  top  of 
their  heid  to  the  soile  of  their  feit,  before  and  behind,  within 
and  without." 

But  even  this  had  but  a  fleeting  effect  on  the  audacious 
dalesmen.  They  brought  in  Scottish  friars  who  administered 
the  sacrament  to  the  unrepentant  raiders  in  their  interdicted 
churches,  regardless  of  prelates,  Scottish  or  English ;  while 
in  a  few  months  Tyne  and  Liddesdale  were  acting  in  concert 
again  and  burning  Tarset  Tower,  the  official  headquarters. 
This  brought  Fenwick  down  again,  but  only  to  another 
disaster,  while  soon  afterwards  we  find  Charltons  and  Dodds 
riding  a  raid  into  Durham  in  company  with  Scottish 
Armstrongs  and  Nobles.  They  were  captured,  however,  and 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  291 

hung  in  chains  on  Haydon  bridge  and  at  Hexham,  Alnwick, 
and  Newcastle,  The  chase  was  exciting  on  this  occasion  to 
the  pursuing  men  from  the  Wear  and  Tees,  and  was  only 
successful  as  the  South  Tyne  had  risen  in  flood,  Haydon 
bridge  being  chained  up  as  usual  in  such  emergencies. 

A  quarter  of  an  hour's  walk  in  either  direction  from 
Bellingham  will  bring  you  up  on  to  the  moors.  Indeed,  these 
are  so  close  that  the  sound  of  the  sportman's  gun  in  early 
autumn  is  a  familiar  note  in  the  rural  chorus  of  the  valley, 
the  bleat  of  sheep,  the  barking  of  colley  dogs,  the  shout  of 
dusty  drovers,  the  cry  of  pewits,  the  sound  of  rushing  waters, 
and  at  long  intervals  the  rumble  of  a  North  British  train 
making  for  Hawick  or  Hexham.  Mounting  the  heathery 
ridge  to  the  south  of  the  valley,  you  are  on  the  edge  of 
and  look  all  over  the  same  billowy  wilderness  that  we  saw 
surging  up  against  the  Roman  wall,  and  can  follow  in  the  dim 
distance  the  long  rampart  that  carries  the  latter  from  Sewing- 
shields  to  the  Nine  Nicks  of  Thirlwal.  Most  nights  of  the 
two  weeks  we  sojourned  in  Bellingham,  the  sun  set  in  a  blaze 
of  glory,  and  when  not  further  afield  we  sought  these  hill- 
tops on  one  or  other  side  of  the  dale  where  we  could 
watch  it  sink  behind  the  wild,  uplifted  horizon  that  roughly 
marks  the  Scottish  border,  and  note  the  sombre  tones  of 
twilight  gradually  spreading  their  grey  mantle  over  the  waste 
of  moors  till  these  were  dark  enough  to  rekindle  slowly 
beneath  the  whiter  light  and  paler  radiance  of  the  moon. 
Surely  at  such  times  as  this,  indeed  at  all  times,  the  fasci- 
nation of  a  Border  country  holds  one  with  extraordinary 
force. 

I  sometimes  think  it  almost  unfits  one  for  complete  enjoy- 
ment of  any  other,  provided,  that  is  to  say,  a  country-side 
means  something  more  than  a  subject  for  the  camera  or  the 
paint-box.  By  a  Border  country  I  do  not  mean  merely  the 
line  of  the  Tweed,  the  Solway,  or  the  Wye.  Most  of  Scotland, 
all  Wales,  and  all  Ireland  are  Border  countries  eloquent  of  the 
clash  of  contending  races  within  recorded  and  comparatively 
recent  times,  and  all  that  such  means.  Blankshire,  in  the  days 


292     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

of  Saxon,  Dane,  and  Briton,  beyond  a  doubt,  had  a  stirring 
time ;  but  it  does  not  look  like  it,  and  in  truth  the  period  is 
rather  dim  and  voiceless.  Blankshire  wears  an  air  of  positive 
indifference,  produced  by  some  eight  hundred  years  of  com- 
parative domesticity  rudely  broken  at  long  intervals,  but 
scarcely  ever  by  blood  or  race  foes.  The  more  peaceful 
past  is  strong  in  architecture,  to  be  sure,  but  the  atmosphere 
suggests  nothing  but  ages  of  tranquillity.  The  prehistoric  on 
the  chalk  downs  of  Wiltshire  seems  much  more  alive  than 
the  historic  in  modern  Blankshire,  which  may  stand  for  most 
English  counties.  But  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  prehistoric, 
which  is  altogether  another  thing.  There  are  mediaeval  castles 
assuredly,  and  some  very  fine  ones,  that  have  certainly  stood  a 
siege  or  two  in  mediaeval  civil  broils  or  later,  but  they  suggest 
in  the  main  the  mere  overawing  of  a  well-behaved  and  com- 
paratively unwarlike  peasantry,  and  the  names  of  great  nobles 
who  did  their  fighting  in  these  other  Border  countries  or 
in  lands  over  sea.  They  contribute  little  but  their  hoary 
carcases  to  the  romance  or  literature  of  the  actual  soil  they 
were  raised  on,  for  the  sufficient  reason  that  the  soil  has  not 
been  congenial  to  retaining  their  significance.  Its  occupants, 
in  short,  seldom  gave  them  sufficient  occasion  to  justify  their 
imposing  presence.  We  all  know,  of  course,  that  their  owners, 
and  sometimes  their  enemies,  found  them  extremely  useful. 
But  these  occasional  incidents  were  not  much  concerned  with 
local  patriotism  or  its  enemies,  and  have  left  no  trace  to 
speak  of  in  local  song  or  story.  Happy,  however,  is  the  castle, 
if  we  may  paraphrase  the  familiar  adage,  that  has  no  history, 
or  we  should  rather  say,  in  this  case,  are  its  dependents. 
No  proletariat  in  Europe  has  been  so  little  harried  by 
war  or  suffering  of  any  kind  as  that  of  Blankshire.  Hence, 
no  doubt,  their  touching  and  complacent  faith  that  they 
never  will  be,  and  their  latter-day  aversion  to  defensive 
weapons.  But  by  way  of  illustrating  what,  for  need  of  a 
better  word,  may  be  called  the  glamour  of  the  Border  atmo- 
sphere, one  might  without  prejudice  conceive  of  some  wight, 
keenly  alive  to  the  voices  of  the  past,  who  should  cross 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  293 

the  Severn  sea  from,  in  this  sense,  the  fairly  resounding  hills 
and  valleys  of  Glamorgan,  Brecon,  or  Carmarthen,  to  the 
opposite  shore.  Here,  on  Exmoor  and  Dartmoor,  which 
nowadays  seem  to  loom  so  large  in  the  public  eye,  he  will 
find  the  physical  conditions  of  South  Wales  in  a  modified 
form  with  Mr.  Blackmore's  Doones  in  full  possession  of  the 
one,  and  the  Pixies  apparently  of  the  other!  The  former 
had  not  been  invented  when  I  lived  in  their  neighbourhood 
as  a  boy,  and  at  the  best  are  poor  sort  of  heroes  for  a  country 
that  really  looks  as  if  things  ought  to  have  happened  there. 
Dartmoor  still  more  suggests  a  stage  for  high  romance,  but 
the  furniture  and  the  actors  seem  lacking.  It  is  not  easy  to 
call  Neolithic  man  out  of  his  mounds,  unless  perhaps  on 
Salisbury  Plain,  and,  moreover,  he  is  everywhere  like  the 
Pixies  and  the  Tylwyth  teg. 

Between  the  trackless  moorland  the  green  vale  of  Tyne 
winds  its  gradually  contracting  course  for  a  score  of  miles 
towards  the  Scottish  border  and  the  lonely  glens  of  Kielder 
and  Deadwater.  But  there  is  a  good  deal  of  life  yet  upon 
both  banks  of  the  river,  if  of  a  more  peaceful  kind  than  that 
which  went  upon  the  war-path  six  hundred  strong.  Two 
miles  above  Bellingham,  girt  about  with  big  timber  and 
throwing  belts  of  fir-wood  up  the  moors  behind,  is  Hesley- 
side,  the  principal  seat  of  the  Charltons,  who  succeeded  the 
de  Bellinghams  in  the  early  fourteenth  century.  The  house 
is  modern,  and  the  original  tower,  a  large  and  strong  one 
resembling  Halton,  was  pulled  down  about  a  century  ago, 
having  been  built  when  the  Charltons  came  into  possession. 
One  of  its  owners  fought  at  Agincourt ;  more  than  two 
centuries  later  another  raised  a  troop  of  horse  for  King 
Charles,  was  created  a  baronet,  and  temporarily  lost  his 
estates.  Between  Agincourt  and  the  civil  wars,  however, 
the  old  fortalice  at  Hesleyside  must  have  witnessed  strange 
things,  for  its  owners,  though  men  in  authority,  were  not 
loathe  to  turn  against  it  when  it  seemed  profitable,  as  we 
have  seen.  Hesleyside  is  particularly  associated  with  the 
well-known  tradition  of  the  dish  consisting  of  a  pair  of  spurs 


294     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

that  was  placed  on  the  table  by  the  chatelaine,  as  a  hint 
that  the  larder  was  empty. 

Just  across  the  Tyne  is  Charlton,  another  ancient  seat  of 
the  clan,  now  a  farmhouse.     The  river  curves  in  shimmering 
shallows  or  in  dark  salmon  pools  from  edge  to  edge  of  the 
level  pastures,  where  cattle  or  dairy  cows,  of  the  shorthorn 
persuasion  mostly,  and  probably  Irishmen,  are  feeding,  though 
this  is  in  the  main  a  land  of  sheep — blackface  and  Cheviot, 
half-bred  or  Border  Leicester.     The  holdings,  too,  are  mostly 
large,  some  immense,  and  the  holders  dwell  in  roomy  stone 
houses  that  have  often  character  and  even  a  picturesqueness 
not  common,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  larger  Northumbrian 
homestead.    The  stern  grey  fronts  have  been  here  and  there 
submitted  to  the  embrace  of  creepers,  and  age  has  mellowed 
the  walls  which  enclose  the  flower  garden  or  orchard,  and 
clothed  them  with  moss  or  gillyflowers.     Fragments  of  the 
adjoining  moorland  already  trench  betimes  upon  the  road- 
side, pleasant  braes  of  fern  and  heather  strewn  about  with 
mossy  crags  and  clumps  of  birch  or  stunted  oak  or  straggling 
rowan  trees.     At  Tarset  two  large  burns  join  the  Tyne  upon 
opposite  banks — that  of  Chirdon  from  the  south,  and  Tarset 
from  the  north.     On  a  knoll  near  the  mouth  of  the  latter 
stand  the  scant  traces  of  the  castle,  already  spoken  of  as  the 
headquarters  of  the  king's  troops,  and  the  scene  of  Sir  Robert 
Fenwick's  discomfiture.     It  is  said  to  have  belonged  at  one 
time  to  the  Red  Comyn,  of  Badenock,  slain  by  Robert  Bruce. 
This  is  a  warm  spot,  for  up  the  Tarset  burn  dwelt  all  sorts 
of  strenuous  souls — the  Milburnes  particularly.      One  of  that 
greyne,  known  as  Barty  of  the  Combe,  occupied  a  small  pele, 
the  remains  of  which  are  extant  on  a  tributary  of  the  Tarset 
known  as  the  Black  burn,  which  near  its  confluence  takes  a 
fine  jump  over  a  little  precipice.     Barty  Milburne  is  immortal 
in  connection  with  his  friend  Corbit  Jack,  who  was  perched 
in  another  tower  higher  up  the  burn.     These  worthies  lived 
in  the  reign  of  Dutch  William,  though  it  may  be  fairly  doubted 
if  they  knew  it  at  the  time,  and  the  first-named  awoke  one 
fine  morning  to  find  that  some  stealthy  Scots  had  made  a 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  295 

-^* 

clean  sweep  of  his  sheep.  So  summoning  his  friend  and 
neighbour,  the  two  set  off  on  the  trail  of  the  rievers,  and 
tracked  them  as  far  as  Carter  Fell,  where  the  adjoining  valley 
of  the  Rede  near  its  source  comes  out  of  Scotland.  Here 
they  lost  the  track,  and,  following  the  usual  Border  custom, 
proceeded  to  indemnify  themselves  from  the  best  Scottish 
flock  they  knew  of  in  the  neighbourhood.  Having  cut  out 
the  choicest  sheep  and  started  for  home,  the  inevitable 
sequence,  in  the  shape  of  a  couple  of  indignant  proprietors, 
overtook  them  above  the  waterfall  known  as  Cattlehope 
Spout.  In  the  mortal  combat  which  as  inevitably  followed, 
Corbit  Jack  was  slain  and  Barty  wounded  in  the  thigh.  With 
a  tremendous  backhanded  blow,  however,  the  Tarset  hero 
caught  one  Scotsman  so  clean  on  the  neck  that  he  "  garred 
his  heid  spring  alang  the  heather  like  an  onion."  Of  the 
other  he  made  short  work,  and  was  thus  left  alone  among 
the  dead.  Barty,  however,  though  himself  wounded,  took  his 
friend's  body  on  his  back,  and  driving  the  sheep  in  front  of 
him,  reached  home  with  mingled  feelings  of  sorrow  and 
triumph,  depositing  the  corpse  in  the  hands  of  the  widow, 
and  replacing  his  own  flock  with  a  fresh  strain. 
This  wild  corner  had  a  war-cry  of  its  own — 

"  Tarret  and  Tarset  head, 
Hard  and  heather  bred, 
Yet— yet— yet " 

and  within  the  last  century  I  am  told  that  many  a  head  has 
been  cracked  at  Bellingham  fair  under  its  inspiring  strains. 
With  all  these  tales  running  in  our  mind,  we  wandered  some 
miles  up  the  Tarset,  till  its  narrow  fringe  of  ancient  but 
scanty  settlement,  with  a  modern  shooting-box  or  two,  and 
their  inevitable  fir  plantations,  at  length  filtered  out  into  the 
moors  and  mosses  that  rise  to  the  western  rampart  of  Redes- 
dale.  Thence  we  swerved  away  over  the  high  ridges  that 
form  the  eastern  wall  of  the  North  Tyne,  through  wastes  of 
rank  moorland  grass,  lit  here  and  there  by  bright  patches  of 
heather  and  traversed  by  belts  of  quaking  and  spongy  moss, 


296     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

whence  an  occasional  snipe  would  dash  away  with  a  scrawk, 
and  vary  the  frequent  note  of  wild-rising  grouse,  who  share 
with  the  black-faced  sheep  the  chief  dominion  of  these  hills. 
There  was  a  tremendous  wind  blowing  on  that  day  beneath 
a  bright  sun,  and  the  ragged  surface  of  the  moors,  where  not 
stiffened  with  heather,  tossed  like  a  ripening  hay-crop,  and 
the  shadows  of  the  lighter  clouds  rioted  over  this  trackless, 
untrammelled  borderland. 

We  dropped  down  again  to  the  North  Tyne  at  Falstone, 
where  the  valley  becomes  deep  and  trough-like,  its  floor  but 
a  meadow's  breath,  and  the  river,  robbed  since  Tarset  of  two 
lusty  feeders,  an  altogether  more  modest,  though  perhaps 
more  noisy,  stream.  Just  above  the  stone  bridge,  which  here 
spans  its  chafing  currents  with  much  less  effort  than  the 
mightier  structure  at  Bellingham,  and  set  amid  a  pleasant 
harbour  of  foliage,  is  the  hamlet  of  Falstone,  with  the  last 
Anglican  church  towards  the  Scottish  border.  The  latter  is 
unnoteworthy,  a  small  edifice  of  reasonable  age  with  a  castel- 
lated tower,  though  a  Runic  cross  of  some  note  was  discovered 
here,  and  carried  away  by  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  in 
whose  rooms  at  Newcastle  it  may  be  seen.  It  is  engraved 
to  the  memory  of  one  Hroethbert,  or  Robert,  by  a  dutiful 
nephew,  and  an  antiquarian  member  of  one  of  the  four 
greynes  sees  evidence  here  of  a  Robson  (Robertson)  in  the 
seventh  century,  if  not  himself  a  raider,  at  any  rate  the 
ancestor  of  generations  of  wight-riders. 

In  the  leafy  graveyard,  above  the  stream,  lie  more  Hedleys, 
Robsons,  Dodds,  Dixons,  and  Telfers,  and  more  hammers, 
scissors,  pickaxes,  and  crossbones,  decorating  their  simple 
headstones.  A  Presbyterian  church  reminds  one  how 
naturally  strong  that  body  is  in  these  dales,  where  not 
only  is  there  frequent  intercourse  with  similar  regions  across 
the  Border,  but  a  great  deal  of  actual  Scottish  blood.  Through 
here,  too,  is  said  to  pass  the  line  where  the  Northumbrian  burr 
gives  way  to  a  more  Scottish  pitch  of  voice  and  intonation. 
And  if  the  Scotch  carrier  has  long  ceased  to  be  a  familiar 
figure,  we  met  a  pedlar  of  that  nation  staggering  cheerfully 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  297 

along  through  the  solitude  beneath  a  most  prodigious  pack  of 
merchandise. 

But  returning  for  a  moment  to  the  mouth  of  the  Tarset, 
four  miles  below,  the  Chirdon  burn,  as  I  mentioned  before  we 
left  the  river  in  pursuit  of  Barty  of  the  Combe,  joins  the  Tyne 
from  the  south  at  the  same  point,  cutting  through  the  low 
pasture  lands  of  Snapdough.  The  Chirdon  is  one  of  the  best 
trouting  burns  running  into  the  North  Tyne,  and  together 
with  this  portion  of  the  latter  being  in  friendly  hands,  I 
explored  its  recesses,  and  followed  it  up  the  moors  in  the 
bed  of  the  stream,  rod  in  hand.  Now,  there  were  two  or  three 
days  in  that  September  hotter  than  anything  I  have  ever 
felt  in  an  English  country-side.  I  know  very  well  what  real 
heat  is  like,  and  have  been  out  in  it  all  day  and  every  day, 
summer  after  summer,  for  several  years,  and  had  no  particular 
objection  to  it.  I  have  only  twice  or  thrice  felt  anything  at 
all  resembling  such  conditions  in  this  country  in  the  course 
of  my  life,  which  is  natural  enough,  as  there  is  no  similarity 
whatever  between  95°  and  80°  in  the  shade,  which  last  quali- 
fied warmth  causes  thankless  Britons  to  deck  themselves  in 
tropical  costumes,  and  retire  to  quite  unnecessary  inactivity  in 
shady  places  and  discuss  the  temperature  in  superlatives  wholly 
inapplicable  to  any  British  one.  Those  48  hours  of  September, 
however,  touched  real  heat,  and  brought  back  to  me  sensations 
long  forgotten.  People  may  talk  about  a  damp  heat,  or  a  dry 
heat,  or  a  trying  heat,  or  vary  in  sensations  of  lassitude,  but 
the  actual  power  of  the  sun  will  be  accurately  recorded  on  the 
thermometer ;  and  any  one  who  has  ever  had  cause  to  experi- 
ence the  various  degrees  of  heat  in  the  nineties,  and  distinguish 
between  them,  will  recognize  the  quite  un-English  force  the 
sun  assumes  on  entering  that  decade.  I  knew  we  were  in  it, 
incredible  though  it  seemed,  at  700  feet  above  sea-level,  in  the 
midst  of  the  Northumbrian  moors,  and  was  not  surprised  to 
hear  that  the  thermometer  in  Bellingham  had  touched  92° — a 
figure,  I  question,  if  it  ever  had  touched  before.  Not  a  breath  of 
air  was  stirring ;  the  very  dogs  had  ceased  to  bark,  the  sheep 
to  bleat.  A  sheet  seemed  almost  too  much  covering  during 


298     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

those  two  nights — an  experience  for  me  unprecedented  in  these 
islands.  On  the  South  Tyne  we  had  been  buffeted  by  wind 
and  storm ;  at  Bellingham,  this  very  home  of  the  tempest,  I 
was  to  be  reminded  of  Julys  in  remote  Virginia.  I  do  not 
know  whether  it  was  the  memory  of  clear  water  worming  for 
trout  in  the  mountains  of  that  beautiful  country  that  inspired 
me  to  a  like  enterprise  up  the  Chirdon  burn,  but  it  seemed 
the  coolest  and  pleasantest  method  of  spending  a  really  fiery 
day ;  for  on  such  days,  or  on  others  approximating  to  them, 
it  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  the  tops  of  low  mountains  or 
moors  are  cool.  They  are  as  warm  as  the  valleys,  and  their 
beauty  is  destroyed  by  the  heat  haze.  Fly  fishing  on  attenu- 
ated streams  in  such  a  month  would  have  been  ridiculous,  but 
the  worm  is  another  matter,  and  under  these  conditions  quite 
a  scientific  lure.  But,  unfortunately,  I  had  no  supply  of 
selected  worms  snugly  scouring  in  moss,  and  I  own  I  did  not 
feel  like  digging  them  in  the  blaze  of  my  landlady's  vegetable 
garden.  She  undertook,  however,  to  find  a  boy,  and  in  due 
course  returned  with  a  scanty  store  of  assorted  specimens 
(worms)  in  a  mustard-tin.  I  expressed  a  hope  that  the  energies 
of  the  Bellingham  urchin,  diverted  for  the  moment  from  the 
third  standard,  were  not  exhausted,  and  that  he  could  brace 
himself  to  a  further  effort.  Then,  to  my  concern,  the  good, 
hard-working  soul  admitted  that  no  boys  were  in  evidence, 
and  that  she  had  dug  them  herself.  This  was  too  much ;  so, 
filled  with  shame  and  remorse,  I  seized  the  spade  and  com- 
pleted the  task.  I  have  had,  I  dare  say,  as  ample  an  experience 
of  rural  landladies  as  most  people  (not  the  watering-place 
variety).  I  should  like  to  write  an  article,  nay,  a  book  on 
them,  and  it  would  be  almost  wholly  in  their  praise,  not,  I 
admit,  as  cooks,  but  as  honest,  worthy  souls,  a  credit  to  their 
sex  and  to  humanity.  But  I  never  had  one  that  dug  bait  for 
me  before,  and  that,  too,  by  stealth,  with  the  thermometer  in 
the  nineties ! 

The  sprightly  waters  of  the  Chirdon  burn,  shrunken 
though  they  were,  proved  a  retreat  cool  enough  at  least  for 
me,  the  formality  of  waders  being  under  such  conditions 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  299 

dispensed  with.  The  willows  and  the  alders,  the  rowan  and 
the  birch,  stretched  their  topmost  sprays  across  the  stream 
till  they  met  betimes  above  one's  head,  and  tempered  the 
smart  of  the  midday  sun,  while  the  air  that  always  rises 
from  chafing  waters  further  mitigated  the  conditions  beneath 
which  the  unaccustomed  folk  of  these  uplands,  and,  indeed, 
of  all  England,  groaned  that  day. 

Casting  a  worm  upstream  in  clear  water,  and  so  manipu- 
lating it  as  to  catch  trout,  is  an  art  to  itself.  So  attenuated 
had  the  Chirdon  burn  become  under  a  brief  fortnight  of 
sunshine,  that  it  was  here  a  very  high  art  indeed,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  after  a  time  the  stream  emerged  upon  the 
open  moor,  and  shook  off  most  of  the  protecting  foliage  amid 
which  a  worm  on  a  full  line  is  even  more  difficult  to  cast 
and  to  work  than  a  fly.  But  wherever  there  were  reasonable 
opportunities,  the  Chirdon  trout  showed  that  the  abnormal 
temperature  had  not  at  any  rate  destroyed  their  appetite. 
I  defied  a  second  hot  morning  in  some  of  the  broad  and 
shallower  streams  of  the  North  Tyne  itself,  and  got  several 
really  nice  fish,  running  up  to  a  pound  in  weight.  By 
Chirdon  burn,  standing  on  a  knoll  above  a  picturesque  water- 
mill  at  the  edge  of  the  moor,  are  the  foundations  of  Dally 
Castle.  What  mediaeval  chief  lived  here  I  know  not,  but  I 
fished  up  higher,  within  sight  of  the  Bower,  where  once  dwelt 
that  Bowery  Charlton,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  was 
permanently  scared  away  from  Bellingham  church  by  the 
prospect  of  saying  his  prayers  in  perpetuity  on  the  tombstone 
of  the  man  he  had  killed.  Long  before  that,  one  Hector 
Charlton  had  lived  here  in  this  cleft  of  the  moors,  whose 
reputation  as  a  prince  of  thieves  reached  Wolsey ;  for  his 
system  was  to  catch  rievers,  and  then  release  them  for  a  share 
of  the  plunder.  This  gentleman  went  all  lengths,  for  when 
Bellingham  church  and  other  churches  were  interdicted,  he 
threw  them  open  and  performed  the  rites  himself,  so  far  as 
one  can  gather  from  the  notes  of  his  antiquarian  relatives, 
and  caused  the  sacrament  to  be  administered  by  outlawed 
friars  to  every  desperado  in  Tynedale. 


300     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Mr.  Charlton  of  Reedsmouth  is,  I  think,  the  last  land- 
owner left  of  this  ancient  and  doughty  greyne,  though  the 
name  is  still  frequent  enough.  That  of  Robson,  as  prominent 
farmers  on  a  large  scale,  is  conspicuous  throughout  the 
country.  The  Robsons,  however,  like  the  Dodds  and  Mil- 
burnes,  though  social  shades  in  the  raiding  and  fighting 
period  of  the  Border  cannot  be  defined  by  modern  standards, 
were  more  of  the  yeoman  kind,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
Scotts  of  Buccleugh  for  a  long  time  had  a  special  family 
feud  with  them.  One  great  raid  the  latter  made  on  Tynedale, 
with  a  special  animus  against  the  Robsons,  apparently  un- 
provoked and  subsequent  to  the  union  of  the  Crowns,  was 
justified  by  the  latter,  in  that  the  Tynedale  clan  had  not 
restored  Buccleugh's  great-grandfather's  sword  captured  in  a 
preceding  century !  What  the  Robsons  and  others  were  to  the 
Charltons,  though  closely  bound  and  doubtless  intermarried 
with  them,  and  still  more  to  the  Swinburnes  and  Dacres, 
such  one  gathers  were  the  Armstrongs,  and  possibly  even  the 
Elliots,  famous  as  was  their  name  and  numerous  their  follow- 
ing, to  the  Douglases,  the  Scotts,  and  the  Kerrs  of  Cessford 
and  elsewhere.  The  touch  of  outlawry  was  always  more  or 
less  upon  them.  Their  "  headsmen,"  unlike  those  of  the  more 
socially  distinguished  law-breakers,  rarely  or  never  appear 
as  wardens  or  keepers  on  either  March  or  as  Crown  officials. 
Their  efforts  when  put  forth  were  invariably  "agin  the 
law" — small  lairds  and  graziers,  distinguished  only  from  one 
another  by  a  doughtier  sword  arm  or  superior  skill  in  leading 
a  raid.  There  could  have  been  small  opportunity  for  culti- 
vating the  refinements  of  life,  or  inclination  to  worry  them- 
selves over  social  subtleties ;  the  right  of  might,  and  the 
exigencies  of  the  family  fued,  did  not  leave  even  the  ladies 
much  opening  for  snubbing  one  another,  or  adjusting  their 
social  relations.  Indeed,  it  was  in  a  sense  tolerably  democratic, 
this  Border  life  ;  nor,  I  fancy,  till  the  fun  was  all  over,  and 
people  could  do  without  their  neighbours,  did  they  begin  to 
arrange  themselves,  as  the  outside  world  had  been  sorting 
itself  since  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  Most  of  the  land,  however, 


NORTH   TYNEDALE  301 

in  all  this  wide  country,  though  the  occupiers  remain,  has 
changed  ownership  within  the  last  half  century. 

It  is  a  delightful  four  miles  of  valley  road  from  the  mouth 
of  the  Chirdon  and  Tarset  burns  up  the  now  rapidly  shrinking 
waters  of  the  Tyne  to  Falstone  ;  a  narrow  byway  wandering 
unfenced  through  gates,  betimes  among  level  meadows,  but 
more  often  skirting  the  foot  of  the  overhanging  moors.  We 
pass  the  modest  church  of  Greystock,  and  the  charmingly 
situated  little  hostelry  of  the  Moorcock,  which,  in  the  days 
before  trout  and  salmon  fishing  waxed  so  precious,  was  a 
favourite  haunt  of  anglers.  The  main  road  up  the  dale, 
though  a  deserted-looking  one  enough,  clings  to  the  higher 
hill-slopes  on  its  northern  side.  Beyond  Falstone,  however, 
the  strip  of  riverside  cultivation  gets  less  pronounced  and 
still  less  occupied,  and  the  country  yet  more  stimulating. 
The  wild  hills  gather  round  in  more  intimate  and  threatening 
fashion,  and  the  way  lies  more  often  along  their  heathery 
breasts,  while  the  river  itself,  singing  in  a  minor  key  upon  its 
shingly  bed,  is  no  longer  always  fringed  by  meadows  ;  for 
the  open  wild  comes  down  quite  frequently  now  to  meet  it, 
clad  with  ferns  and  heather,  and  shaggy  with  stunted  birch 
and  ash  and  fir.  Sometimes,  too,  ancient  and  branching 
alders  group  themselves  like  sacred  groves  on  flats  of  natural 
turf,  kept  sweet  and  short  by  generations  of  mountain 
sheep. 

The  Wickhope  burn  comes  in  near  here  from  the  south, 
issuing  from  gorges  still  shaggy  with  the  remnants  of 
indigenous  forests.  From  the  ridge  above  it  there  is  a  com- 
manding view  of  the  river  coiling  into  the  folds  of  the  hills, 
with  the  wooded  spur  of  Mounceys  in  the  foreground  ;  while 
hard  by  the  road  is  an  old  and  secluded  seat  of  the  Swin- 
burnes,  still  in  their  hands.  Further  up  the  Lewis  burn  comes 
tumbling  out  of  a  narrow  woody  cleft,  and  pauses  for  a 
moment  beneath  the  little  stone  arch,  which  lifts  us  over  it, 
in  a  black  pool,  before  rushing  down  to  the  Tyne.  A  track 
disappears  up  its  glen  leading  to  the  isolated  homesteads  of 
one  or  two  respectable  farmers,  whose  flocks  range  the  wastes 


302     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

behind.  But  three  centuries  ago  that  ancient  track,  hardly 
noticeable  now,  a  mere  commonplace  trail  to  the  haunts  of 
men  of  the  saddle,  not  greatly  concerned  with  carts  or  wains, 
was  the  outlet  of  a  community  whose  performances  outshone 
even  those  of  other  Tynedalers,  and  who  were  the  despair  of 
officials  and  their  chiefs  in  London  ;  a  sort  of  minor  sanctuary 
was  this  of  evil-doers,  even  when  the  rest  of  the  country  was 
for  the  moment  coerced,  "a  marvellous  strange  ground  of 
woodes  and  waters."  It  comes  back  to  me  on  a  grey  and 
waning  afternoon  in  late  September,  when  autumn,  in  this 
high  country,  had  begun  to  chill  the  winds  and  to  scatter  the 
jaded  sycamore  leaves  over  the  surface  of  the  mountain 
streams.  There  is  nothing  much  to  arrest  one  in  the  spot  itself ; 
merely  a  dark  burn  pouring  out  of  a  little  glen,  clothed  on 
one  side  with  stunted  trees  and  on  the  other  with  grass,  along 
whose  slope  a  farm  track  sidles.  I  could  not  resist  some 
dalliance  on  the  bridge  as  a  tribute  to  the  genius  of  the 
place,  though  my  way  was  long,  and  the  light  was  fading, 
and  rain  was  threatening.  For  here,  perhaps,  was  the  last 
refuge  of  the  genuine  Tudor  and  Jacobean  raider,  before  he 
abandoned  the  business  to  the  ordinary  cattle  or  sheep 
stealer,  who  carried  on  the  old  traditions  for  long  after  in  less 
heroic  fashion.  This  is  near  Plashetts,  and  Kielder  is  another 
three  or  four  miles  up  the  dale.  Kielder  is  both  beautiful 
and  wild.  The  moors  here  fall  back  again  somewhat,  show- 
ing their  open  rugged  breasts  and  sides  all  the  better  for  it, 
and  leaving  space  for  the  scattered  settlements  attached  to 
Kielder  Castle,  a  shooting-box  of  the  Duke's,  which  lies 
among  fir  woods  in  the  fold  of  loftly  hills  that  here  attain 
the  normal  Cheviot  maximum  of  two  thousand  feet.  For 
some  miles  now  we  have  been  wandering  in  what  was 
debatable  land,  neither  Scottish  nor  English,  till  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  how  far  it  extended  through  the  passes  into 
Roxburghshire,  I  do  not  know  ;  but  it  was  a  convenient 
harbour  of  refuge  for  the  people  who  lived  in  it,  though  not 
by  any  means  a  country  for  the  casual  visitor. 

We  are  now,  however,  approaching  the  dividing  line  that 


v     - 


303 

was  run  just  before  the  union  of  the  Crowns,  and  the  whole 
scene  is  in  fine  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  its  past,  despite 
the  little  railway  that  climbs  perseveringly  through  it,  and 
the  cottages  scattered  thinly  over  the  fenceless  vale,  down 
which  the  Northern  Tyne,  robbed  of  its  waters  by  half  a  score 
of  lusty  burns,  and  now  itself  but  a  trifling  brook,  comes  piping 
its  modest  lay.  There  is  here  a  Liliputian  station  displaying, 
with  laconic  pathos  on  its  narrow  platform,  a  name  embalmed 
in  border  song  and  story.  Deadwater  was  in  charge  of  a 
young  woman  the  only  time  I  alighted  there.  But  for  the 
little  matter  of  the  Union  it  would  be  a  frontier  custom  house  ; 
who  uses  it  I  cannot  imagine !  The  outlook  from  it  is  wide, 
solitary,  and  beautiful,  incidentally  disclosing  a  couple  of 
farmhouses,  and,  perhaps,  twice  as  many  cottages.  It  stands 
on  the  international  boundary  line,  which  a  shepherd  pointed 
out  to  me,  following  an  erratic  course  by  rivulets  and  stone 
walls.  I  was  going  to  say  it  does  not  mean  much  more  to 
its  solitary  custodians  nowadays  than  a  county  line.  But 
this  would  savour  of  blasphemy  for  one  thing,  and  be  incor- 
rect even  on  practical  issues.  For  if  you  lived  on  the  other 
side  of  the  dyke,  and  had  no  pronounced  convictions,  you 
would  be  by  inference  a  Presbyterian  ;  while  if  you  were 
entangled  in  the  meshes  of  the  law,  you  would  be  dealt  with 
in  another  jargon  altogether.  We  all  know,  too,  that  you 
might  find  yourself  married  any  day  through  the  dropping  of 
a  chance  word  ;  while  if  you  were  a  young  man  arriving  in  a 
English  colony  and  looking  for  a  job,  it  would  be  almost  every- 
thing to  be  able  to  hail  from  the  far  side  of  yonder  burn. 
Otherwise  I  need  hardly  say  the  boundary  just  here,  unlike 
the  Tweed,  cuts  capriciously  through  a  homogeneous  people, 
quite  unconscious  of  any  cleavage,  and  up  here  on  the  waste 
as  like  one  another  as  two  peas.  To  the  west  of  the  railroad 
this  same  line  straggles  out  by  a  stone  dyke  to  a  sharp 
point  in  the  bare  pasture-land,  and  then  flies  back  to  the  more 
natural  course  of  the  Bell  burn,  which  executes  some  little 
leaps  as  it  tumbles  along  beneath  the  northern  shadow  of  the 
rugged  summit  of  Black  Fell.  Eastward  it  follows  for  a  space 


304     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

the  infant  streams  of  the  Tyne,  which  here  bend  sharply  in 
that  direction  towards  their  source,  and  strikes  the  summit  of 
Peel  Fell.  In  a  wild  hollow  under  the  English  slope  of  the 
latter  mountain,  the  North  Tyne  springs  from  the  peat  mosses, 
and  on  its  way  down  lingers  silently  for  a  time  in  a  rushy  flat, 
known  to  the  Borderers  of  both  Marches  as  the  Dead  water, 
a  name  now  embalmed,  as  we  have  seen,  on  the  time-tables 
of  the  North  British  Railway.  Here,  too,  we  are  just  upon 
the  watershed.  A  few  hundred  yards  beyond  the  infant 
burns  begin  to  trickle  down  through  a  region  as  wild  and 
high  as  the  English  one  towards  the  Liddle  and  the  Teviot. 
This  Kielder  forest,  with  its  upstanding,  rugged  fells,  is 
generally  accounted  the  south-western  end  of  the  Cheviots. 
There  is  no  break,  however,  in  the  mountain  chain,  which 
extends  in  a  still  broad  belt,  with  no  dip  in  altitude,  along 
the  Cumbrian  border  by  Bewcastle,  Tynedale  Head,  Alston, 
and  so  to  the  Pennines.  But  the  term  "  Cheviot "  ceases  here 
geographically,  even  if  it  be  used  at  all  colloquially  south  of 
Redesdale. 

Among  the  traditions  which  lie  thick  among  these  hills 
that  of  the  Cowt  of  Kielder  is  as  familiar  as  any.  I  did  not 
get  as  far  as  the  Kielder  stone,  which  helps  to  mark  the 
boundary  line  somewhere  on  Peel  Fell.  It  is  merely  a  large 
isolated  boulder,  around  which  it  was  held  unlucky  to  ride 
thrice  "  withershines  "  ;  that  is,  against  the  course  of  the  sun, 
though  why  anybody  should  court  disaster  by  so  fantastic  a 
performance  only  the  folk-lorist  may  know.  It  is  not  from 
this,  however,  that  the  monolith  has  gathered  fame,  but  from 
some  associations  with  the  aforesaid  Cowt  of  Kielder,  a  fight- 
ing laird  whose  stalwart  proportions  provided  him  with  this 
handy  and  suggestive  sobriquet  He  lived  in  the  days  of 
Robert  Bruce,  and  his  local  rival  was  a  neighbour  of  as  great 
but  more  evil  fame — Sir  William  Soulis,  of  Hermitage,  in 
Liddesdale.  He  also  was  a  person  of  gigantic  strength,  but, 
worse  still,  he  combined  it  with  the  black  arts,  and  made 
himself  such  a  tyrant  to  neighbours  gentle  and  simple,  and 
from  his  mountain  stronghold  so  flouted  the  king  that  the 


NORTH  TYNEDALE  305 

latter  waxed  positively  sick  at  the  sound  of  his  name,  and 
begged  the  frequent  complainants  to  boil  the  knight  alive,  if 
only  he  could  hear  no  more  of  him.  This  heroic  measure 
was  actually  put  in  force,  and  the  cauldron  that  was  utilized 
for  the  purpose  was  long  preserved  near  Hawick.  The 
Scottish  king  is  said  to  had  been  greatly  agitated  at  his 
petulant  outburst  being  taken  so  literally,  but  we  doubt  if 
such  a  trifle  would  have  kept  Robert  Bruce  awake.  Long 
before  this  fearsome  ceremony,  however,  the  place  of  which 
is  still  pointed  out,  the  Soulis  had  extinguished  the  Cowt  of 
Kielder.  According  to  Leyden's  ballad,  the  latter  and  his 
party,  fully  armed,  rode  over  to  hunt  the  deer  in  Liddesdale 
in  defiance  of  its  lord,  and,  with  further  bravado,  the  Cowt 
rode  thrice  round  the  Kielder  stone  against  the  sun  on  his 
way  there.  After  this,  apparently,  he  hedged  somewhat  by 
fastening  a  sprig  of  rowan  in  his  helmet.  Soulis,  however,  on 
perceiving  his  rival  hunting  his  preserves,  sent  a  messenger 
to  bid  them  all  to  dinner.  This  was  ominous,  as  the  Scottish 
laird's  feasts  had  been  fatal  to  one  or  two  of  his  neighbours, 
notably  the  laird  of  Mangerton.  The  Cowt,  however,  rejoic- 
ing in  his  strength,  and  trusting  to  the  rowan  sprig  as  a 
specific  against  the  black  arts  practised  by  his  rival,  accepted 
the  invitation,  cautioning  his  followers  to  stick  to  their  arms, 
and  to  be  particularly  on  the  alert  if  a  bull's  head  was  served 
up,  which  seems  to  have  been  a  sign  of  mischief  at  Hermitage. 

"  And  if  the  bull's  ill-omened  head 

Appear  to  grace  the  feast, 
Your  whingers  with  unerring  speed 
Plunge  in  each  neighbour's  breast." 

In  due  course  this  unsavoury  and  fearsome  dish  was  placed 
upon  the  table.  But  the  quick  hands  of  the  guests  were  at 
the  same  moment  spellbound,  and  each  man  riveted  to  his 
seat ;  all  saving  the  Cowt  with  his  rowan  sprig,  who  sprang 
through  the  door  and  into  the  open,  sword  in  hand,  when  a 
desperate  running  conflict  ensued.  Neither  Soulis'  sword, 
though  aided  by  an  adder  handle,  nor  his  retainers'  spears, 


306     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

could  accomplish  ought  against  the  Herculean  Cowt  of 
Kielder,  till  the  latter's  helmet  fell  off  in  crossing  a  burn. 
Then  at  last  he  was  overcome,  and  held  under  water  by  the 
spears  of  his  late  entertainers  till  life  was  extinct.  He  was 
buried  near  the  Hermitage,  and  his  grave  of  gigantic  size  is 
said  to  be  still  pointed  out  at  the  corner  of  a  ruined  chapel, 
and  I  have  no  reason  to  doubt  this  merely  because  I  have 
never,  to  my  misfortune,  been  in  Liddesdale. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
REDESDALE 

THE  tract  of  high  moorland  which  separates  North  Tyne- 
dale  from  Redesdale  comes  to  a  point  where  the  lesser 
river  joins  the  greater,  two  miles  below  Bellingham.  This 
wedge,  running  north-west  for  twenty  miles  between  the 
famous  valleys  to  the  Scottish  Border  and  Jedburgh  forest, 
has  expanded  even  at  Bellingham  to  a  width  of  half  a  dozen 
miles,  and  soon  doubling  that  distance,  maintains  it,  judged 
merely  by  the  crow's  flight,  for  the  rest  of  its  course.  The 
pedestrian,  however,  who  undertook  to  tramp,  let  us  say, 
from  Plashetts  to  the  Byrness,  would  find  the  aforesaid  crow 
had  a  prodigious  advantage  of  him.  By  the  time  he  had 
climbed  hills  deep  in  white  grass  or  heather,  picked  his  way 
over  mosses,  or  circumvented  them,  or  followed  circuitous 
tracks,  he  would  credit  himself  with  at  least  twenty  miles, 
even  if  the  distance  travelled  were  not  actually  quite  so  much. 
Both  here  and  in  the  yet  broader  waste  between  the  two 
Tynes  there  are  a  few  lonely  homesteads  set  back  into  their 
fringe,  and  reached  by  rough  roads  that  pether  out  beyond 
them  into  the  heath.  It  would  be  strange  indeed  if,  come  of 
such  a  vigorous  stock,  there  were  not  a  few  original  characters 
still  surviving  in  these  inner  sanctuaries,  though  no  longer, 
as  once,  fenced  out  from  a  hostile  world  by  barricades  of 
fallen  trees.  For  when  "  raiding  "  in  all  its  forms  was  practi- 
cally extirpated,  smuggling  came  up  as  an  invaluable  outlet 
to  the  wild  spirits  of  the  dale,  and  on  their  hardy  little  nags 
they  pursued  it  with  enthusiasm,  and  kept  up  a  constant 
traffic  with  the  sea-coast,  and  distributed  ardent  liquors  all 

307 


308     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

over  the  country  at  popular  prices.  I  must  not  put  my  foot 
in  it,  as  Macaulay  did,  but  an  old  friend,  who  knew  every  yard 
of  this  Border  country  in  a  practical  fashion  in  early  life,  and 
lived  in  it,  assures  me  that  the  king's  writ,  even  in  his 
memory,  did  not  run  in  Bewcastle,  which  is,  of  course,  just 
over  the  Cumbrian  border.  Bewcastle,  in  the  raiding  days, 
had  as  sinister  a  reputation  as  any  district,  and  retained 
its  dislike  of  conventionalities  longer  than  any.  Another 
acquaintance,  who  has  good  reason  to  know  the  inwardness 
of  this  silent  land  to-day,  tells  me  of  a  patriarchal  household 
deep  within  it,  well  known  to  him,  and  consisting  of  three 
generations,  who  own  their  considerable  possessions  in  flocks 
and  cash  in  common.  Nothing  is  divided,  various  sons, 
brothers,  and  husbands  running  the  big  sheep  farm  with 
their  own  labour,  while  if  any  member  of  the  clan,  male  or 
female,  is  in  need  of  money,  which  is  very  seldom,  as  they 
rarely  emerge  into  the  world,  they  repair  to  a  common  till 
where  the  loose  cash  is  kept  and  take  out  what  they  want. 
I  have  also  heard  doctors  in  this  country  descant  upon  the 
terrors  of  the  night-work.  But  these  hill  people  are  all  well 
off.  Howsoever  remote,  no  addition  to  even  a  herd's  family  is 
considered  as  properly  introduced  to  the  world  in  the  absence 
of  a  doctor.  The  latter  is  met,  perhaps,  at  the  edge  of  the 
wilderness  on  a  dark,  snowy  night  in  winter  by  the  man  of 
the  household,  or  a  representative  on  horseback  to  act  as 
guide,  with  or  without  a  lantern.  Then,  over  some  miles 
of  trail  in  mist,  black  darkness,  or  driving  snow,  anything 
may  happen.  Sometimes,  one  such  practitioner  told  me, 
even  the  guide  would  lose  his  way,  and  the  pair  would 
be  wandering  about  half  the  night  only  to  arrive  after  the 
event  was  all  over.  The  fees  are  reasonably  good,  however, 
a  shilling  a  mile,  and  there  is  no  pinching  to  pay  it.  It 
is  otherwise  in  the  mountains  of  Lakeland.  I  once  had  to 
consult  a  young  and  clever  doctor  there,  a  stranger  then  to 
me,  whose  normal  practice  extended  over  a  hundred  or  two 
square  miles  of  mountain  and  valley.  He  punched  me  all 
over,  and  not  only  prescribed,  but  provided  the  remedy,  and 


REDESDALE  309 

his  bill  was  half  a  crown,  and  that  not  very  long  ago !  After 
this  introduction  we  went  a-fishing  together,  and  he  used  to 
describe  his  night-work,  which  there  was  of  necessity  on  foot, 
not  being  a  horse  country:  long  midnight  tramps  over  the  fells 
in  snow  and  rain,  with  no  slight  risk  to  life,  frequently  for  a 
shilling  fee,  a  situation  relieved  somewhat  during  the  tourist 
season.  My  friend  has  since  shifted  to  a  less  arduous  sphere. 
Every  prudent  man  does  so  after  a  time,  unless  he  is  in  a 
position  to  take  a  young  partner,  for  the  simple  fact  that 
scarcely  any  constitution  can  stand  the  work  for  more  than  a 
moderate  term  of  years  in  either  country. 

The  only  road  from  North  Tynedale  to  the  Redewater 
starts  from  Bellingham,  near  the  end  of  the  wedge,  and  even 
that,  though  but  some  seven  miles,  is  wild  enough.  But, 
after  all,  it  is  a  regular  highway  of  reasonable  quality,  and 
I  traversed  it  often,  both  under  the  sun  and  under  the  moon. 
It  rises  laboriously  from  the  village,  and  after  winding 
between  the  fells,  drops  finely  down  with  long  descent  to  the 
historic  hamlet  of  Otterburn,  and  beyond  Otterburn,  a  little 
oasis  of  foliage,  one  can  see  the  bare  moors  rolling  away 
again  towards  the  sources  of  the  Wansbeck  and  to  Upper 
Coquetdale. 

On  the  descent  to  the  Redewater,  too,  one  crosses  Watling 
Street,  just  here  a  wide,  hard  road  that  has  driven  straight 
through  the  country  from  Corbridge  on  the  South  Tyne,  to 
follow  up  the  Rede  for  a  few  miles  before  forsaking  the 
highway  again  for  the  heather. 

I  presume  the  reader  needs  no  reminder  that  here,  at 
Otterburn,  took  place  that  immortal  struggle  in  the  moonlight 
between  the  forces  of  Hotspur  and  Douglas,  which  has  rung 
down  the  ages,  and  is  the  basis  of  the  famous  ballad  of 
Chevy  Chase.  We  have  no  space  here  for  ballad  contro- 
versies, but  this  battle  of  Otterburn  has,  of  course,  a  notable 
ballad  of  its  own.  Otterburn  Tower,  which  was  beset  by 
Douglas  when  Harry  Percy  marched  against  him,  is  still 
here,  in  so  far  that  a  country  house  was  raised  on  the  site  of 
the  old  fortress  of  the  Halls  less  than  a  century  ago.  It  is 


310     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

now  owned  and  occupied  by  Mr.  Howard  Pease,  whose  tales 
of  Northern  life  find  favour  in  discriminating  circles  beyond 
the  Tyne  and  Tees.  Some  of  the  foundations  of  the  old 
tower,  originally  built  by  the  Umfravilles,  are  embedded  in 
the  modern  house,  and  there  is  still  the  deep  well,  the  mouth 
of  which  is  covered  by  a  grating,  at  the  entrance  to  the 
present  dining-room. 

"  I  never  hear  the  old  song  of  Percy  and  Douglas,"  wrote 
Sir  Philip  Sydney,  himself  reared  among  the  fortresses  of  the 
Welsh  Marches,  "  that  I  find  not  my  heart  more  moved  than 
by  a  trumpet." 

Otterburn  is  pre-eminently  the  great  fight  of  Border  story, 
and  from  that  day  to  this  has  stirred  the  imagination  of  Bor- 
derers, as  Flodden  stirred  that  of  the  two  nations  in  a  wider 
sense.  Not  in  the  former  case  from  the  numbers  engaged 
or  from  the  butcher's  bill,  doubtless  exceeded  in  many  a 
stricken  field  of  purely  Border  quarrel,  but  as  a  chivalrous 
and  fiercely  contested  duel  between  the  great  rival  houses  of 
Percy  and  Douglas  at  a  moment  when  they  were  at  their 
zenith,  and  led  by  the  most  warlike  of  their  respective  names. 
And  how  it  all  came  about  must  be  repeated  here.  A  brief 
truce  between  the  nations  having  expired  in  August,  1388,  a 
large  Scottish  army  immediately  gathered  in  Jedburgh  Forest 
and  crossed  the  Border.  The  main  army  poured  over  the 
Western  March  into  Cumberland,  but  about  five  thousand 
picked  men,  under  the  Earls  of  Douglas,  March,  and  Moray, 
went  rapidly  and  silently  through  Northumberland,  crossed 
the  Tyne  near  Corbridge,  and  began  burning,  slaying,  and 
ravaging  the  then  richer  county  of  Durham ;  the  smoke 
they  raised,  it  is  said,  giving  the  first  alarm  to  the  towns  of 
Durham  and  Newcastle.  Henry  Percy,  the  first  earl,  then  at 
Alnwick,  despatched  his  two  sons,  Henry  (Hotspur)  and 
Ralph,  to  Newcastle,  while  he  himself  remained  in  the  hope 
of  cutting  off  the  Scottish  retreat.  On  August  the  i$th  the 
Scots  appeared  before  Newcastle,  and  two  or  three  days  of 
brisk  skirmishing  ensued.  Hotspur,  then  just  of  age,  had 
already  won  renown,  though  not  yet  his  well-known  sobriquet. 


REDESDALE  311 

Douglas  had  a  few  more  years,  and  proportionately  more 
reputation,  and  was  burning  to  meet  the  young  North- 
umbrian in  single  combat.  Some  writers  say  his  rash 
advance  on  Newcastle,  while  the  earl  was  gathering  a  force 
at  Alnwick  in  his  rear,  was  solely  prompted  by  this  motive.  At 
any  rate,  he  sent  Henry  Percy  a  challenge  at  once,  which  the 
other  as  quickly  accepted.  "  They  met,"  says  the  chronicler, 
"  at  the  utterance,  mounted  on  two  great  coursers,  with  sharpe 
spears."  Hotspur  was  struck  in  the  side  at  the  first  charge 
and  thrown  from  his  saddle.  "Whereon,"  says  Froissart, 
"  the  Englishmen  that  stood  without  the  gate  made  for  the 
rescue,  recovered  him  on  foot,  and  brought  him  forthwith 
back  into  the  town."  The  Scots,  for  every  reason,  soon 
abandoned  the  siege ;  but  before  retiring,  Douglas  rode  to 
the  gate  with  Hotspur's  captured  pennon  and  gauntlets,  the 
latter  embroidered  with  the  lion  of  England  and  the  Percy 
lion  in  pearls,  and  demanded  a  parley  of  his  rival,  thus 
addressing  him,  according  to  Froissart,  "Syr,  I  shall  bear 
this  token  of  your  prowess  into  Scotland,  and  shall  set  it 
high  in  my  castle  of  Dalkeith,  that  it  may  be  seen  afar  off." 
"  By  God,  Lord  Douglas,"  replied  Hotspur,  "  you  shall  never 
carry  it  beyond  Northumberland,  of  that  be  sure." 

"  '  Where  schall  I  bide  the  ? '  sayd  the  Douglas, 

'  Or  where  wylte  thow  come  to  me  ? 
At  otterbourne  in  the  hygh  way, 
Ther  maist  thow  well  lodged  be.' 

" '  Ther  schall  I  byde  the,'  sayd  the  Douglas, 

By  the  fayth  of  my  boyde.' 
'  Thether  schall  I  come,'  said  Syr  Harry  Percy, 
'  My  trowth  I  plyght  to  The.'  " 

Hotspur,  for  various  reasons,  was  held  back  for  the 
moment  by  his  knights,  and  the  Scots,  breaking  their  camp, 
retreated,  plundering  through  Northumberland,  till  they 
came  to  Otterburn.  It  seems  that  Douglas  had  expected 
Hotspur  to  follow  up  his  challenge,  and  from  a  sense  of 
chivalry  laid  siege  to  Otterburn  tower,  to  allow  his  enemy  a 
chance  of  again  crossing  swords  with  him.  The  latter 


312     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

was  informed  on  his  side  of  the  other's  movements.     So,  in 
the  early  morning  of  August  19,  with  six  hundred  lances  and 
eight    thousand    foot  (according  to   the   highest   estimate), 
the  two  Percies,  with  Lord  Lumley,  Mathew  Redman,  Robert 
Ogle,  Grey  of  Heton,  Grey  of  Horton,  John  Lilburne,  and 
other  Northumbrian  and  north-country  knights,  he  rode  out  of 
Newcastle.    They  covered  the  long  march  of  some  thirty-two 
miles  within  the  day,  and  wearied  as  the  footmen  must  have 
been,  fell  suddenly  on  the  Scots  just  after  sunset,  taking  them 
completely  by  surprise.     Happily  for  the  latter,  it  was  the 
encampment  of  the  servants  and  attendants  that  lay  across 
the  direct  and  only  line  of  attack  ;  so  the  leaders  and  knights, 
who  were  supping  at  their  ease,  and  had  made  themselves 
huts  of  boughs,  had  time  to  don  their  armour,  while   the 
others,  supported  by  fresh  bodies  who  had  heard  the  uproar 
and  the  cries  of  "  a  Percy !  a  Percy !  "  stemmed  the  first  rush 
of  the   Northumbrians.     But    these  old    campaigners    had 
apparently  well-arranged   methods  of  procedure  in  case  of 
surprise.     On  this  occasion  the  ilite  of  the   Scots   moved 
quietly  round  the  skirting  marshes,  and  fell  upon  the  flank 
of  the  English,  bringing  matters  to  a  condition  of  equality. 
Night  had  now  fallen,  though  illumined  by  a  brilliant  moon, 
when  this  tremendous  combat  began  in  savage  earnest.    The 
English  seem  to  have  been  in  superior  numbers,  but  they 
had  endured  a  long  day's  march,  which  probably  accounts  for 
the  fact  that  while  in  the  first  part  of  the  battle,  being  the 
attacking  party,  things  went   more   than    well  with   them, 
they  were  gradually  checked,  and  finally  thrust  back  with  all 
the  worst  of  the  combat  and  the   greater  slaughter.      We 
naturally  hear  most  of  the  desperate  combats  between  knight 
and   knight.     At   a   critical   moment    for   the    Scots,    Earl 
Douglas  caused  his  silken  banner,  blazoned  with  St.  Andrew's 
cross,  the  hearts  and  stars  of  Douglas,  and  the  motto  "  Jamais 
arryere,"  to  be  advanced  to  the  front. 

Around  the  Scottish  standard  the  battle  now  waged  thick 
and  fierce,  the  brothers  Percy  being  foremost  in  the  fray. 
The  uncertain  moonlight,  no  doubt,  made  ready  identification 


REDESDALE  313 

difficult  and  probably  frustrated  any  schemes  for  a  personal 
encounter  between  the  two  famous  leaders.     Our  old  friend 
Hardyng,  the  rhyming  chronicler,  and  Hotspur's  page,  who 
fought  by  his  side  both  here  and  at  Shrewsbury,  declares  that 
his  master  achieved  the  revenge  which  fell  to  him  by  his  own 
arm.  But  Froissart,  who,  though  of  course  not  present,  gathered 
his  information  from  those  who  were,  and  is  held  to  be  more 
credible,  tells  a  different  tale.     However  that  may  be,  the  two 
Percies  hewed  their  way  to  the  Douglas's  standard,  and  Sir 
Patrick  Hepburn  and  his  sons,  among  others,  fell  in  its  defence. 
The  rival  banners  met,  Froissart  tells  us,  and  there  was  a 
sore  fight,  the  mingled  cries  of  "  a  Percy  !  a  Douglas ! "  rising 
above  the  din.     "  Of  all  the  bataylles  and  encountrynges  that 
I  have  made  mencion  of  heretofore  in  all  this  my  story,  great 
or  small,  this  bataylle  was  one  of  the  sorest  and  best  foughten 
without  cowards   or  faynte  hearts ;  for  there  was   neither 
knight  nor  squier  but  that  did  his  devoyre  and  foughte  hande 
to  hande."     Douglas,  misdoubting  the  issue  at  one  moment, 
though  in  the  haste  of  the  first  surprise  he  had  left  both 
breastplate  and  bascinet  behind  him,  seized  an  axe,  and  like 
Hector,  says  Froissart,  hewed  his  way  through  the  m$lte  till, 
unrecognized  in  the  dim  light,  he  was  thrust  to  the  earth 
with  three  spears.     This  would  seem,  however,  to  have  been 
well   on   in  the  night.     As  he  lay   dying  he  was  stoutly 
defended  by  his  chaplain,  William  Lundie,  and  when  his 
plight  was  discovered,  and  one  of  those  around  him,  Sir  John 
Sinclair,  asked  how  he  feared,  he  replied,  "  Right  poorly,  yet, 
thank  God,  but  few  of  my  ancestors  have  died  in  their  beds. 
I  count  myself  dead,  for  my  heart  beats  slow,  but  think  to 
avenge  me.     Raise  my  banner  which  lieth  near  me  on  the 
ground,  show  my  state  neither  to  friend  nor  foe,  lest  mine 
enemies  rejoice  and  my  friends  be  discomforted."     If  Hotspur 
was  avenged,  so  in  a  degree  was  Douglas ;  for  the  Percies, 
through  pressing  too  rashly  forward,  according  to  the  English 
accounts,  were  both  captured.      Sir  Ralph  surrendered,  ex- 
hausted by  wounds,  to  a  new-made  knight,  John  Maxwell, 
and  Hotspur  in  the  same  plight  fell  to  Sir  Hugh  Montgomery, 


and  thenceforth  the  best  of  the  day,  or  rather  of  the  night, 
remained  with  the  Scots.  The  Scottish  ballad  makes  Hotspur, 
when  at  last  overpowered,  somewhat  concerned  lest  there 
should  be  no  one  of  sufficient  rank  on  the  spot  to  whom 
he  might  surrender  with  honour.  On  discovering,  however, 
that  his  antagonist  is  Sir  Hugh  Montgomery,  he  is  quite 
satisfied,  for,  according  to  the  same  ballad,  he  has  himself 
already  killed  Douglas — 

"  When  Percy  wi'  the  Douglas  met, 

I  wat  he  was  fu'  fain, 

They  swakked  their  swords  till  sair  they  swat, 
And  the  bludd  ran  down  like  rain. 

"  That  Percy  with  his  gude  sword, 

That  could  so  sharply  wound, 
Has  wounded  Douglas  on  the  brow, 
Till  he  fell  to  the  ground." 

However  slain,  Douglas  lingered,  as  we  have  seen,  for  a  brief 
space,  and  his  death,  screened  from  his  troops  by  a  braken 
bush,  is  connected  by  a  familiar  and  pretty  tradition  with 
Percy's  later  surrender.  The  latter  had  expressed  regret  that 
the  great  Douglas  could  not  receive  his  sword,  and  Montgomery 
urged  him  to  surrender  to  an  adjoining  braken  bush,  behind 
which,  unknown  to  the  other,  lay  the  body  of  the  Scottish 
chieftain. 

The  Bishop  of  Durham,  who  had  marched  from  Newcastle 
with  a  thousand  men,  arrived  just  before  dawn  to  meet  the 
remnant  of  Hotspur's  force  retreating  through  the  now  moon- 
less night  from  the  stricken  field,  while  the  Scots,  with  a 
hundred  English  knights  as  prisoners,  were  secure  in  their 
strong  camp.  The  statements  as  to  the  loss  on  eitheir  side 
differ  so  hopelessly  as  to  make  any  here  futile.  Froissart,  for 
example,  gives  the  number  of  killed  and  wounded  English 
as  eighteen  hundred.  The  fight  at  Otterburn,  at  any  rate, 
took  the  breath  out  of  the  Borderers,  and  there  was  peace 
there  for  the  ensuing  and  last  twelve  years  of  Richard  the 
Second's  reign.  In  the  next  battle  with  a  Douglas,  as  we 
shall  see  when  we  get  there,  Hotspur  had  an  ample  revenge 


REDESDALE  315 

for  Otterburn,  though,  strange  to  say,  he  was  himself  little 
more  than  a  spectator. 

Leaving  the  Rede  water  for  the  moment  and  following 
a  fair  road  heading  due  east  over  the  moors  towards  Rothbury, 
fifteen  miles  away,  a  short  hour's  walk  brings  one  to  Elsdon, 
a  village  of  some  interest  for  its  remote  and  picturesque 
situation,  its  ancient  church,  its  pele-tower  vicarage,  and  for 
many  characteristics  peculiar  to  an  old  abiding  place  of 
relative  importance  but  great  isolation.  What  is  left  of  it 
lies  about  a  large  triangular  green  sloping  to  the  south, 
beneath  which  runs  the  Elsdon  burn.  The  old  church,  with 
its  ample  graveyard,  and  further  back,  raised  above  the  rest, 
its  vicar's  battlemented  fortress,  fill  the  upper  side.  All  about 
are  lonely  fells  which  make  a  suggestive  setting  to  this  old  haunt 
of  rugged  and  sequestered  and  once  self-sufficing  humanity, 
with  its  battalions  of  rude  gravestones  canted  this  way  and 
that  over  a  full  acre  of  shady  turf,  its  generous  green  below, 
where  the  still-treasured  site  of  the  cockpit,  though  interesting, 
seems  as  a  relic  somewhat  thin  considering  what  much  more 
serious  gatherings  this  expanse  of  immemorial  turf  must  have 
often  seen.  Some  curious  letters  are  preserved  written  by 
Dr.  Dodgson,*  a  scholarly  parson  and  man  of  the  world,  after- 
wards Bishop  of  Ossory,  who  suddenly  found  himself  vicar  of 
Elsdon,  about  the  year  1760. 

"  Don't  give  yourself  the  trouble,"  he  writes  to  a  friend, 
"  to  send  my  letters  to  this  place,  for  'tis  almost  impossible 
to  receive  'em  without  sending  sixteen  miles  to  fetch  'em. 
I  am  my  own  surgeon  and  apothecary ;  no  creature  of  the 
profession  within  the  same  distance.  A  clog-maker  combes 
my  whig  upon  my  curate's  head  for  a  block,  and  his  wife 
powders  it  with  a  dredging-box.  The  vestibule  of  my  castle 
is  a  low  stable,  above  it  a  kitchen,  in  which  are  two  beds. 
The  curate  and  his  wife  lie  in  one,  Margery  the  maid  in  the 
other.  I  lay  in  the  parlour,  between  two  beds  to  keep  me 
from  being  frozen  to  death.  The  village  consists  of  my  tower, 

*  Great-grandfather  of  the  late  Mr.  Dodgson,  author  of  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land, etc, 


316     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

an  inn  for  Scotch  carriers,  five  little  farmhouses,  and  a  dozen 
more  inhabited  by  poor  people  who  receive  the  parish 
allowance,  and  superannuated  shepherds.  The  principal  farm- 
houses are  five  or  six  miles  apart.  The  whole  country  looks 
like  a  desert  [This  was,  of  course,  at  that  period  the  Low- 
landers'  mental  attitude  towards  wild  or  rugged  scenery.] 
The  richest  farmers  are  Scotch  Dissenters,  and  go  to  meeting- 
house at  Birdhope  Crag,  ten  miles  from  Elsdon.  They  do 
not  interfere  in  ecclesiastical  matters,  nor  study  polemical 
divisions.  They  are  hereditary  Presbyterians,  part  of  their 
estate  rather  than  of  enthusiasms.  Those  near  Elsdon  come 
to  church,  those  near  Birdhope  Crag  go  to  chapel,  others  of 
both  sorts  will  go  to  the  nearest  church  or  conventicle. 
There  is  a  good  understanding,  and  they  will  frequently  do 
penance  together  in  a  white  sheet,  with  a  white  wand,  and 
barefoot,  in  one  of  the  coldest  churches  in  England,  and  at 
the  coldest  season." 

Again  :  "  Not  a  tree  or  a  hedge  within  twelve  miles  to 
break  the  force  of  the  wind.  I  have  lost  everything  but  my 
reason,  and  cover  my  head  with  three  nightcaps  and  a  pair 
of  stockings.  As  washing  is  cheap,  I  wear  two  shirts,  and, 
for  want  of  a  wardrobe,  hang  my  great-coat  on  my  back. 
There  is  to  be  a  hopping  on  Thursday  s'night — the  conclusion 
of  a  pedlar's  fair ;  a  great  concourse  of  braw  lads  and  lasses, 
who  throw  off  their  wooden  shoes,  shod  with  plates  of  iron, 
and  put  on  Scotch  nichevers  made  of  horse-leather." 

Adjoining  the  modern  Otterburn  tower,  which  is  girt 
about  with  fine  timber,  is  a  picturesque  hamlet  containing 
an  inn  of  some  reputation.  Otterburn  was  the  chief  seat  of 
the  Halls,  a  fact  already  elucidated  in  these  pages  when  con- 
cerned with  the  doings  of  one  of  the  last  of  them — "  Mad 
Jack  " ;  and  the  Halls  were  the  chief  clan  of  Redesdale,  run 
very  close  by  the  Reeds  of  Troughend  and  elsewhere,  while 
Hedleys,  Potts,  Fletchers,  and  others,  though  of  somewhat 
less  importance,  each  comprised  a  family  squadron  bound 
together  by  ties  of  name  and  blood,  and  ready  for  any 
adventure  in  their  own  particular  line.  Just  about  Otterburn 


REDESDALE  317 

the  valley  expands  somewhat,  leaving  space  for  several  grass 
farms,  with  their  homesteads,  marked  on  the  bare  landscape 
by  clusters  of  trees,  to  spread  up  and  about  from  the  meadows 
that  border  the  stream  to  the  fringe  of  the  moors. 

The  battle  is  thought  to  have  taken  place  from  one  to 
two  miles  above  Otterburn,  on  the  lower  eastern  slope  of  the 
vale,  the  hayfields  through  which  the  Rede  now  prattles 
having  then,  no  doubt,  been  the  marshes  which  played  a  part 
in  such  simple  tactics  as  were  incidental  to  that  heady  fight. 
In  a  small  wood  near  the  main  road  stands  a  rude  shaft, 
supposed  to  mark  the  spot  where  Douglas  died,  and  some- 
what irrelevantly  called  i  Percy's  Cross.  Further  along  the 
road  up  the  dale,  I  found  imyself,  one  Sunday  morning  of 
bright  sunshine  and  balmy  wind,  beside  a  carefully  hewn  and 
inscribed  stone  bench,  set  up  in  the  last  century  at  the  edge 
of  the  highway,  and  just  above  the  Rede.  Carved  upon 
the  back:  "/»  these  fields,  on  the  igtk  of  August,  1388,  the 
battle  of  Otterburn  was  fought,  and  deeds  were  done  which 
in  the  noblest  of  English  ballads  live  immortally  recorded" 
One,  of  course,  needed  no  such  reminder.  I  never  heard 
the  old  song  of  Percy  and  Douglas  that  I  found  not  my 
heart  more  moved  than  with  a  trumpet.  Yet  confronting 
the  pilgrim  on  this  quiet  highway,  amid  the  encircling  moors, 
these  few  simple  words  in  stone  seemed,  if  anything,  to 
accentuate  the  thrill  that  upon  such  a  spot  must  move  the 
heart  of  any  with  the  faintest  sense  of  the  past,  or  a  mind 
not  utterly  dead  to  its  echoes.  There  was  no  stir  in  the 
fields,  nor  any  traffic  on  the  road,  as  I  rested  for  half  an  hour 
on  these  eloquent  and  suggestive  flagstones.  The  Rede 
piped  faintly  in  a  woody  hollow  not  far  below,  and  the  light 
cloud-shadows  sailed  over  the  breezy  pastures  and  flecked 
the  higher  shoulders  of  the  moors.  A  mile  or  two  distant, 
on  the  long  slopes  that  spread  upwards  from  the  river,  peering 
out  of  a  grove  of  mighty  elm  and  ash  trees,  I  could  see  the 
gables  of  Troughend.  Half  an  hour  before  I  had  been  stand- 
ing in  front  of  it  on  the  Watling  Street,  and  had  been  glad 
to  be  able  to  recall  if  but  two  or  three  verses  only  of  the 


318     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

ballad  celebrating  the  tragic  death  of  Percy  Reed  that  gave 
me  pause  there.  It  was  not  this  present  mansion,  scarcely 
yet  two  centuries  old,  and  now  a  huge  farmhouse,  that 
sheltered  the  hapless  hero  of  the  tale,  but  the  original  pele 
tower,  whose  foundations  are  still  visible  close  beside  it.  No 
personal  incident,  though  it  happened  in  Elizabeth's  reign, 
seems  to  have  remained  longer  in  the  minds  of  the  natives 
than  the  betraying  of  Percival  Reed  to  his  death  at  the  hands 
of  the  Croziers  by  the  Halls — "  the  fause  Ha's  "  of  Girsonfield, 
a  homestead  just  across  the  dale. 

Now,  Percy  Reed  was  a  great  hunter  and  a  fine  soldier, 
and  held  the  office  of  Keeper  of  Redesdale  under  the  Warden 
of  the  Middle  March.  Through  his  zeal  in  the  cause  of 
order  he  had  incurred  the  hostility  of  his  own  neighbours, 
the  Halls,  as  well  as  the  Croziers,  a  family  of  regular  moss- 
troopers just  on  or  over  the  Scottish  Border,  some  of  whom 
he  had  brought  to  justice.  The  Halls,  though  brewing 
vengeance,  laid  low  for  a  time  in  simulated  friendship,  till 
an  opportunity  occurred  of  making  the  Croziers  the  instru- 
ments of  Percy's  undoing.  Having  laid  their  plans  with 
these  moss-troopers,  the  Halls  invited  the  unsuspecting  sub- 
warden  to  hunt  with  them  at  the  head  of  the  dale.  Though 
his.  wife  dreamed  fearsome  dreams,  and,  worse  still,  the  loaf 
appeared  at  breakfast  upside  down  on  the  platter,  the  bold 
Percy  laughed  at  the  omens,  and,  with  a  light  heart,  joined 
his  treacherous  companions. 

"  « To  the  hunting,  ho  !'  cried  Farcy  Reed. 

'  The  morning  sun  is  on  the  dew ; 
The  cauler  breeze  frae  off  the  fells 

Will  lead  the  dogs  to  the  quarry  true. 
To  the  hunting,  ho  ! '  cried  Farcy  Reed, 

And  to  the  hunting  he  has  gane ; 
And  the  three  fause  Ha's  o'  Girsonfield 

Alang  wi'  him  he  has  ta'en." 

They  wound  up  their  day's  sport  at  a  hut  in  the  Bating- 
hope,  a  lonely  glen  near  the  sources  of  the  Rede,  when  five 
of  the  Croziers,  by  preconcerted  arrangement,  appeared  sud- 
denly on  the  scene.  The  Halls  then  galloped  away  in 


REDESDALE  319 

pretended    fear,  having  previously  tampered  with   Percy's 
arms. 

"  They've  s'town  the  bridle  off  his  steed 

And  they've  put  water  in  his  lang  gun, 
They've  fixed  his  sward  within  the  sheath, 
That  out  again  it  winna  come. 

"  O  turn  thee,  turn  thee,  Johnie  Ha'  1 

O  turn  thee,  man,  and  fight  wi'  me ; 
When  ye  come  to  Troughend  again 
My  gude  black  naig  I  will  gie  thee. 

"  O  turn  thee,  turn  thee,  Tommy  Ha'  ! 
O  turn  now,  man,  and  fight  wi'  me ; 
If  ever  ye  come  to  Troughend  again 
My  daughter  Jean  I'll  gie  to  thee." 

So  Percy  Reed  was  slain  by  the  Croziers  and  hacked  after 
death  with  such  ferocity  that  his  body  had  to  be  brought 
back  piecemeal  in  pillow-slips  to  Troughend.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  the  ghost  of  Percy  haunted  Redesdale  per- 
sistently. He  was  often  seen  in  the  daylight  in  his  green 
hunting  coat,  with  his  long  gun,  traversing  the  moors  of 
Batinghope,  and  sometimes  on  stormy  nights  he  would  come 
and  crack  his  whip  in  fury  around  the  walls  of  his  own  tower 
of  Troughend.  Later  on,  and  within  quite  modern  times, 
he  assumed  the  gentle  guise  of  a  dove,  and  used  to  perch  on 
a  large  stone  in  the  Rede  at  Pringlehaugh,  and  as  the  folks 
went  on  Sunday  to  the  meeting-house  at  Birdhope  Crag,  they 
used  to  take  their  hats  off  to  "  the  spirit  of  Troughend." 

As  for  the  fause  Ha's,  they  were  driven  with  indignation 
from  Redesdale,  leaving  a  slur  upon  the  name,  and  causing 
all  the  other  Halls  for  generations  much  inconvenience  by 
the  constant  protests  they  felt  bound  to  make  against  any 
connection  with  the  fause  Ha's.  The  ballad  was  handed  down 
by  oral  tradition,  and  given  by  one  of  the  Telfers  to  Scott, 
who  alludes  to  it  in  the  first  canto  of  Rokeby,  where  Bertram 
exclaims — 

"  Do  not  my  native  dales  prolong, 
Of  Percy  Reed  the  tragic  song, 
Trained  forward  to  his  bloody  fall 
By  Girsonfield,  the  treacherous  Hall." 


320     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

An  old  woman  named  Kitty  Hall  used  to  croon  the  lay 
early  in  the  last  century,  and  always  wound  up  with  regrets 
that  the  miscreants  of  the  tale  bore  her  name.  A  respectable 
inn-keeper,  another  of  the  Hall  clan,  is  well  remembered  as 
being  wont  to  exclaim  when  in  his  cups,  "Aw  wunna  disguise 
me  neame's  Ha' — Tommy  Ha',  but  aw  trust  to  me  meaker 
a'm  nit  comao'  the  fause-hearted  Ha's  that  betrayed  Percy 
Reed."  One  may  assume,  however,  that  most  of  the  Halls 
survived  the  stigma. 

The  long  road  up  Redesdale,  under  the  Carter  Fell,  into 
Scotland  is  an  admirable  one,  and  pursues  a  wild  and  beauti- 
ful course  of  a  dozen  miles  before  it  drops  over  the  high 
watershed  into  Roxburghshire  and  Jed  Forest.  At  the  village 
of  Horsley,  three  miles  up,  there  is  a  roomy  inn,  the  Redes- 
dale  Arms,  whose  former  landlord,  Tommy  Ha',  has  just  been 
alluded  to.  Being  regularly  utilized  by  sportsmen  of  condi- 
tion, its  capacities  may  be  assumed  and  its  name,  therefore, 
taken  note  of,  in  a  country  where  accommodation  is  scarce. 
Near  Rochester,  a  mile  or  so  on,  and  finely  poised  on  a  high 
ledge  commanding  a  wide  outlook,  is  the  Roman  station  of 
Bremenium.  I  was  quite  unprepared  for  such  a  fine  and  well- 
preserved  camp  so  far  in  advance  of  the  Roman  wall.  It  was 
built,  no  doubt,  to  guard  the  Watling  Street,  which  here  leaves 
our  main  road  and  shoots  over  the  moors  toward  Kelso. 
Bremenium  occupies  a  level  plateau  of  some  four  acres,  the 
ground  falling  sharply  away  on  three  sides.  A  great  deal  of  the 
wall  is  perfect,  some  of  it  standing  ten  feet  high  and  in  places 
twenty  feet  thick,  while  the  gateways  are  still  in  good  repair. 
On  the  level  sward  within  are  two  pele  houses  still  perfect, 
and  three  or  four  modern  cottages,  from  one  of  which  an 
ancient  and  retired  shepherd  emerged  and  entertained  me 
well  for  half  an  hour.  He  was  obviously  proud  of  the  camp 
of  which  he  was  an  accidental  occupant,  and  might  have  been 
an  antiquary  if  he  had  not  been  a  shepherd.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  his  declining  years  were  greatly  cheered  by  con- 
stant speculation  on  the  customs  and  habits  of  the  builders 
of  these  massive  walls  of  masonry,  on  to  which  his  windows 


REDESDALE  321 

looked,  nor  do  I  think  he  lost  any  enjoyment  from  being 
without  much  notion  of  dates  and  periods.  That  of  the 
Romans  he  alluded  to  as  five  hundred  years  agone.  The 
peasant,  who  is  really  an  amateur  antiquary,  and  has  sufficient 
history  for  the  past,  we  most  of  us  know.  But  I  am  sure,  since 
I  have  met  them,  that  there  are  numbers  of  unlettered  and 
inarticulate  men  who  feel  much  curiosity  and  interest  in  the 
relics  of  the  unknown  and  mysterious  dead  that  daily  con- 
front them.  My  shepherd  of  Bremenium,  at  least,  knew  the 
track  of  Watling  Street,  and  as  we  stood  at  the  north-west 
angle  of  the  wall  looking  directly  over  the  wild  moors,  through 
which  it  runs,  buried  under  grass  and  heather,  towards  Jed- 
burgh  and  Kelso,  he  told  me  how  he  used  to  drive  ewes  in 
here  over  that  same  trail  from  the  latter  town,  and  re- 
membered the  first  importation  of  black-faced  sheep  across 
the  Border,  whereas  now  they  are  more  numerous  on  the 
hills  than  the  native  Cheviot.  He  also  told  me  that  the 
Scottish  ewes  brought  in  from  there  in  the  summer  used  to 
get  restless  and  stray  northward  just  before  they  had  their 
lambs.  It  is  curious  how  custom,  stereotyped,  no  doubt,  by 
experience,  keeps  some  mountain  breeds  so  exclusively  to 
their  own  ranges.  The  Northumbrian  moors  and  the  much 
wetter  and  stonier  Lakeland  mountains  are  in  sight  of  one 
another,  but  to  my  knowledge  I  never  saw  a  Herdwick,  the 
universal  sheep  of  the  latter  in  Northumberland,  nor  did  I  ever 
see  a  Cheviot  in  Lakeland.  The  Blackface  is  a  wonderfully 
adaptable  mountaineer,  and  not  only  that,  but  he  makes  such 
a  good  cross,  one  need  never  be  surprised  to  find  him  in  a 
suburban  paddock.  But  on  the  moors  in  his  wild  state  there 
is  nothing  to  touch  him  for  his  grace,  his  dignity,  his  carriage, 
and  complete  harmony  with  wild  surroundings.  What  prettier 
sight  is  there  than  when  a  scattered  band,  grazing  near  to 
the  side  of  a  moorland  road,  run  together,  and  in  a  solid 
phalanx  defy  the  advances  of  your  impudent  terrier,  or,  again, 
of  some  old  big- horned  tup  stalking  shoulder  deep  through  the 
heather  ?  No  Herdwicks,  nor  Cheviots,  nor  Welsh  Kerrys, 
nor  Cardigans,  nor  Exmoors  can  approach  the  Blackface  as 
Y 


322     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

a  feature  in  mountain  scenery,  though  for  grace  and  symmetry 
no  sheep  in  England,  to  my  thinking,  can  equal  the  bright- 
eyed  Cheviot.  The  goats  that  only  a  century  ago  roamed 
these  hills  as  they  did  the  Welsh  mountains,  where  we  all 
know,  thanks  to  Shakespeare,  that  they  stampeded  on  the 
night  of  Glyndwr's  birth,  must  have  been  at  least  as  brave  a 
sight  as  the  Blackface,  but  the  goats  have  gone ;  I  have  seen 
a  few  in  Wales,  but  usually  in  humiliating  propinquity  to 
farmhouses,  and  an  occasional  one  in  the  Cheviots.  But 
modern  science  has  improved  upon  goat's  whey  as  a  cure  for 
consumption  and  other  ailments,  an  exploded  faith  which 
preserved  some  flocks  to  the  Cheviots,  at  any  rate,  till  quite 
recent  times. 

After  Rochester,  the  Jedburgh  road  breaks  out  from  all 
entanglements  on  to  open  heather,  with  the  Rede  shimmering 
far  below  amid  narrow  strips  of  grass,  bosky  here  and  there 
with  the  remnants  of  the  stunted  oak  forests  that  once 
straggled  over  these  cold  hill  slopes.  A  mile  or  two  beyond 
the  dale  closes  up  for  the  moment,  leaving  but  a  narrow  glen 
for  the  passage  of  the  river's  peaty  streams,  while  our  road 
traverses  the  high  shoulder  above,  amid  a  fine  display  of 
purple  heather  breaking  here  and  there  into  outcrops  of 
upstanding  crag. 

And  now,  with  the  vale  once  more  expanding  somewhat, 
there  is  disclosed  from  this  pinnacle  of  the  highway  before  it 
again  descends,  several  miles  of  its  almost  straight  and  tree- 
less progress  towards  Scotland.  A  very  inner  sanctuary  of 
Redesdale  this  must  have  been  against  these  English  neigh- 
bours with  whose  property  its  hardy  sons  took  such  frequent 
and  outrageous  liberties,  while  as  regards  the  Scots  at  whose 
immediate  gate  it  lay,  there  was  probably  no  settlement  to 
speak  of  beyond  this  point  till  the  Union,  and,  indeed,  there 
is  little  enough  now.  Some  three  miles  up  the  green  trough, 
down  which  the  Rede  now  meanders  a  mere  silvery  thread, 
where  ungathered  hay-pikes  may  even  yet  be  seen  amid  the 
stone  dyke  enclosures,  stands  the  Byrness,  a  capacious  stone 
farmhouse,  set  on  a  ridge  above  the  road.  Mellow  with 


REDESDALE  323 

sufficient  years,  and  a  bright  glimpse  of  flowers  along  its 
sunny  front,  screened  from  the  winds  by  groves  of  elm  and 
ash,  it  looks  up  and  down  the  bare  vale  and  out  on  to  the 
steep  fells  before  and  behind  it,  telling  its  own  tale  as  that  of 
a  mighty  sheep  farm.     Every  one  in  the  Middle  March  on 
both  sides  of  the  Border  knows  or  has  heard  of  the  Byrness, 
and  of  the  Robsons  who  have  been  its  tenants  for  genera- 
tions.    What  its  limits  are  and  the  number  of  sheep  that 
graze  within  them,  I  know  not.     The  Byrness,  at  any  rate, 
dominates  the  valley  for  some  miles,  and  the  hills  for  more, 
while,  if  you  climb  up  the  latter,  you  are  always  confronted 
on   either   hand   by  the   wilderness.     A   bird   might   fly  to 
Plashetts  on  the  North  Tyne  in  a  dozen  miles ;  but  if  I  were 
going  to  walk  it,  I  should  take  care  to  start  betimes  in  the 
morning.     In  the  other  direction,  travelling  northwards,  you 
would  remain  in  the  wild  heart  of  the  Cheviots  indefinitely 
till  you  chose  to  escape  by  following  some  burn  to  the  right 
or  left  into  the  adjacent  country,  either  Scottish  or  English. 
Indeed,  the  source  of  the  Coquet  is  but  three  or  four  miles 
from  here,  for  one  is  now  drawing  right  into  the  spinal  ridge 
of  the  Cheviots.     The  hills  as  about  Deadwater  and  Kieldar 
are  steeper  if  not  higher,  for  the  range  does  not  seriously 
exceed  two  thousand  feet  till  it  reaches  its  northern  portion 
in  the  Wooler  districts.     But  the  "  Haws  "  and  "  Dodds,"  the 
"  Fells,"  "  Pikes,"  and  "  Crags  "  that  toss  and  heave  over  these 
hundreds  of  square  miles  of  heather,  grass,  and  fern,  break 
out  up  here  betimes  in  bolder  shapes,  with  rugged  caps  and 
rock-plated  flanks.     It  is  curious,  too,  how  little  the  Saxon 
and  Scandinavian  have  impressed  their  bloody  tales  on  place- 
names.     Throughout  Wales,  where  life  both  in  primitive  and 
mediaeval  times  was  mainly  passed  as  here  in  deeds  of  arms, 
fields,  hills,  and  streams  in  every  quarter  tell  the  tale  by  their 
names.     Topography  would   seem   to  appeal   more  to  the 
Celtic  imagination  ;  the  wood,  the  mountain-side,  the  valley, 
to  reflect  and  retain  the  shadows  of  the  men  who  fell  or 
triumphed  there ;  the  brook  once  dyed  in  blood  to  run  red  in 
perpetuity ;   the  cries   of  the  wounded,  the   shouts   of  the 


victors,  the  traitor's  crime,  still  to  echo  their  long-forgotten 
tale  in  the  daily  traffic  of  rural  life  and  on  the  page  of  parish 
maps.  But  here,  though  a  fat  volume  could  be  filled  with 
the  records  still  extant  of  ancient  strife  in  these  two  dales 
alone,  scarcely  any  trace  of  it  lingers  in  the  nomenclature. 
Even  that  long  fierce  warfare  throughout  the  centuries  pre- 
ceding the  Norman  conquest  between  Saxon  and  Dane,  Celt 
or  Pict  along  the  Border,  has  left  almost  a  blank  upon  the 
map.  The  Teuton,  no  doubt,  has  had  the  final  say  in  this 
matter,  and  his  imagination,  we  may  fairly  assume,  did  not 
run  in  this  particular  groove.  Beasts  of  the  chase,  on  the 
other  hand,  often  appear  in  place-names ;  but,  then,  their 
harbourage  was  a  more  permanent  fact.  The  wail  of  widows 
or  the  revenge  of  a  chieftain,  though  no  doubt  sufficiently 
remembered,  left  no  echoes  in  this  particular  glen  or  phan- 
toms in  that  particular  meadow  for  the  more  practical  North- 
umbrian of  any  era. 

A  pack  of  foxhounds  is  kennelled  at  the  Byrness,  and  I 
should  think  that  no  other  in  Britain  has  at  once  so  romantic 
and  so  remote  a  domicile.  Mr.  Jake  Robson,  the  owner,  is 
as  noted  for  his  indefatigable  pursuit  on  horseback  of  the 
Northumbrian  mountain  foxes  as  is  Joe  Bowman  of  Patter- 
dale,  in  his  humbler  capacity  of  huntsman,  for  the  endurance 
with  which  he  has  followed  his  hounds  on  foot  over  the 
steeper  fells  between  the  Pennines  and  Helvellyn  for  the 
last  thirty  years.  The  latter  I  have  several  times  had  cause 
to  admire  on  the  mountain,  to  say  nothing  of  the  racy 
eloquence  of  his  fireside  reminiscences.  Mr.  Robson  I  know 
only  through  the  mouth  of  his  friends,  and  by  his  reputation, 
which  is  no  mean  one.  The  romance  of  wild  fox-hunting,  in 
the  saddle,  at  any  rate,  is  here,  I  should  opine,  at  its  best. 
Mr.  Robson's  followers,  who  must  of  necessity  be  somewhat 
limited  for  the  most  obvious  reasons,  declare  that  there  is 
nothing  like  it  anywhere  else.  There  is  certainly  no  such 
illimitable  sweep  of  wild  upland  at  the  disposal  of  a  pack 
quartered  in  its  very  heart,  or  one  that  wants  more  knowing, 
and,  moreover,  quite  unknown  to  outsiders.  Exmoor,  if 


REDESDALE  325 

three  years  of  boyhood  spent  on  it  mainly  in  pursuit  of  fish 
and  fowl,  and  occasionally  hares  and  foxes,  may  qualify  one 
to  judge,  is  comparatively  hard  and  sound.  Moreover,  it  is 
not  so  rugged,  and  is  also  nowadays  very  fashionable.  This 
one  is  a  lonely  wilderness  of  prodigious  extent  on  both  sides 
of  the  Border.  Furthermore,  the  killing  of  foxes  here,  as  in 
Cumberland,  is  a  vital  necessity  in  the  cause  of  the  lambs. 
No  sportsman  in  these  countries  views  with  equanimity  the 
escape  of  a  stout  fox,  for  stout  foxes  are  common,  in  that  he 
may  live  to  run  another  day.  He  has  to  be  killed  if  possible, 
at  all  costs,  and  in  all  weathers,  and  demands  an  endurance 
in  men  and  hounds  beyond  the  common.  There  is  no  vestige 
of  artificiality  about  hunting  here,  though  it  probably  would 
not  commend  itself  to  the  average  lessee  of  a  hunting-box  in 
the  shires.  Moreover,  there  would  be  no  motoring  up  to 
London  on  off  days,  nor  any  escape  from  that  boredom 
which  country  life  seems  to  entail  upon  so  many  modern 
sportsmen  when  out  of  the  saddle,  or  not  engaged  in  the 
ranks  of  what  Mr.  Abel  Chapman  calls  the  pom-pommers. 

Two  miles  above  the  Byrness  homestead,  near  which, 
by  the  way,  is  a  diminutive  church,  one  finds  the  valley 
as  it  once  more  closes  up  transformed  into  a  narrow  lake, 
which  winds  towards  Scotland  for  some  mile  and  a  half. 
This  is  the  reservoir  of  quite  recent  creation  which  supplies 
Newcastle,  and  sounds  prosaic,  though,  like  Cwm  Elan  and 
Lake  Vyrnwy,  it  is,  in  actual  fact,  a  romantic  addition  to 
the  scenery,  and  well-stocked  with  trout,  if  not  set  perhaps 
in  quite  so  inspiring  a  frame  as  these  others.  On  its  banks, 
sheltered  like  the  Byrness  by  fine  timber,  is  another  old  home- 
stead, that  of  Catcleugh,  once  owned  by  a  branch  of  those 
Halls  who  bought  Otterburn  after  the  attainder  of  their 
eccentric  relative  in  the  'fifteen.  Henceforward  solitude, 
broken  only  by  a  wayside  house  or  two,  continues  with  the 
traveller  till  in  some  three  or  four  miles  he  tops  the  water- 
shed and  drops  into  Scotland. 

The  Redesweir,  this  wedge  of  upland  crossed  by  the 
highway  which  parts  the  waters  falling  into  England  and 


326     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Scotland  respectively,  is  famous  for  a  border  brawl  that  arose 
from  a  friendly  judicial  meeting  and  the  well-known  ballad 
which  commemorates  it.  It  has  already  been  said  that  the 
whole  reign  of  Elizabeth  was  distinguished  in  these  parts  by 
almost  continuous  strife,  both  international  and  interclan,  in 
addition  to  the  Rising  of  the  North  in  15/1,  which  cost  the 
Earl  of  Northumberland  his  head. 

That  the  Percies,  the  natural  leaders  of  Northumberland, 
were  for  the  very  fear  of  them  practically  restrained  from 
northern  residence  by  the  Crown,  and  this  for  some  genera- 
tions must  have  been  wholly  a  misfortune  to  the  Border. 
There  was  no  dominant  family  of  outstanding  rank — for  the 
Nevilles  were  in  Cumberland,  and  out  of  reach  of  rivalry 
to  administer  authority  and  compel  respect.  Forsters,  S win- 
burns,  Fenwicks,  Herons,  and  others,  all  of  the  same  degree, 
competed  for  influence  with  the  alien  warders  of  the  Marches 
sent  from  the  south  to  Berwick,  or  were  wardens  themselves, 
and  Sir  John  Forster  held  office  in  the  Middle  March  when 
the  affair  of  the  Redesweir  happened. 

I  ought,  before  this,  perhaps,  to  have  said  a  word  as  to 
the  duties  of  a  warden,  but  it  must  be  only  a  word,  for  a  com- 
plicated system  that  lasted,  with  variations,  for  four  centuries 
would  fill  a  chapter.  Both  kingdoms,  when  not  actually  at 
war,  and  again  after  the  Union,  were  at  one  as  to  policing 
the  Borders  so  far  as  possible,  and  indemnifying  one  another's 
subjects  for  private  raids.  In  Elizabeth's  time  the  ceremony 
of  the  wardens'  courts  held  annually  in  the  open  on  the 
"  Debatable "  land  was  briefly  somewhat  thus  : — The  day 
appointed,  once  or  twice  a  year,  as  the  case  might  be,  was 
proclaimed  or  posted  up  on  both  sides  of  the  Border. 
All  who  had  grievances,  which  mainly,  of  course,  related 
to  four-footed  stock,  though  sometimes  to  the  retention 
of  private  captives  of  bow  and  spear,  then  proceeded  to 
lay  them  before  their  own  warden,  who,  if  he  held  them 
legitimate,  forwarded  the  particulars  to  his  brother  official 
on  the  other  side  for  inquiry  and  consideration  against  the 
day  of  meeting.  This  last  was  quite  a  formal  cermony,  at 


REDESDALE  327 

its  commencement,  at  any  rate,  whether  held  on  a  mountain- 
top  by  a  cairn,  or  on  a  wild  watershed  like  the  Redesweir. 
Each  warden  for  the  Middle  March,  a  Scot  or  a  Kerr  pro- 
bably from  the  one  side,  a  Percy,  and  in  later  days  an  alien 
like  Sir  Robert  Carey,  occasionally  a  Neville,  or,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Redesweir  a  Forster,  from  the  other,  repaired 
thither  backed  by  a  goodly  company.  A  truce  was  then 
solemnly  proclaimed  till  the  next  day  at  sunrise,  after  which 
a  jury  composed  of  six  from  either  nation  was  chosen.  The 
cases  were  then  examined  by  the  wardens  and  their  clerks, 
and  there  were  many  other  elaborate  rites  and  formalities  of 
procedure  impossible  to  enumerate  here.  If,  on  the  evidence, 
a  man  was  acquitted,  the  warden  wrote  across  the  bill  "  clear, 
as  I  am  persuaded  upon  my  conscience  and  honour."  In  the 
case  of  a  conviction,  he  was  responsible  for  the  delivery  of 
the  goods  or  culprit,  leaving  a  servant  of  his  own  as  hostage. 
That  the  peace  on  such  occasions,  when  individuals  came 
face  to  face  with  their  particular  enemies,  was  often  main- 
tained with  difficulty,  and  sometimes  not  at  all,  goes  without 
saying.  This  time  the  Fenwicks  had  raised  a  stir.  Suddenly 
remembering  that  one  of  them  had  been  murdered  thirty 
years  before  by  a  Crozier,  they  rode  into  Liddesdale  and  slew 
a  number  of  that  clan  in  their  beds.  Sir  J.  Carmichael,  who 
was  deputy-keeper  of  Liddesdale,  obtained  the  surrender  of 
their  guide  from  Sir  George  Heron,  who  was  keeper  of 
Redesdale,  a  seemingly  modest  concession.  But  it  was  too 
much  for  Sir  John  Forster,  the  warden  who  ejected  Heron 
from  office,  and  proceeded  to  appoint  a  Court  with  Carmichael, 
outraging  the  proprieties  of  Border  custom,  as  the  latter  was 
not  a  warden  at  all. 

The  gathering  was  an  exceptionally  large  one,  but  things 
went  well  for  a  time,  the  wardens  drinking  together  amicably, 
and  their  followers  playing  cards  and  throwing  dice.  Later 
on  Forster  and  Carmichael  came  to  words  about  an  English 
delinquent  condemned  for  non-appearance,  the  former,  who 
seems  to  have  held  office  for  thirty-seven  years,  slighting 
Carmichael  as  of  inferior  position  to  himself.  The  latter, 


328     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

taking  it  as  a  slur  upon  his  family,  grew  hot,  and  protested 
he  was  as  good  a  man  as  the  warden,  when  the  latter, 
according  to  the  Scottish  ballad — 

"  Raised  and  raxed  him  where  he  stood, 

And  bade  him  match  him  with  his  marrows, 
Then  Tyndail  heard  them  reason  rude, 
And  they  loot  off  a  flight  of  arrows." 

The  English  account,  however,  says  that  cries  of  "  I  say  ! 
I  say!  comparison,"  terminated  this  unseemly  dispute,  but 
that  almost  immediately  a  Crozier  shot  an  arrow  at  Fenwick 
of  Wallington  and  wounded  him,  which  seems  more  in  the 
natural  order  of  things.  Then  with  one  shout  they  raised 
the  slogan. 

Fie,  Tindall,  to  it!  JedburgJis  Jiere !  and  the  fat  was 
in  the  fire.  Forster  and  Carmichael  made  vain  efforts  to 
stem  the  torrent.  The  Scots  were  at  first  driven  back,  but 
another  company  from  Jedburgh,  arriving  in  the  nick  of  time, 
turned  the  tide,  and,  after  some  fierce  fighting,  drove  the 
English  from  the  field,  pursuing  them  for  three  miles.  Heron 
and  many  others  were  killed,  and  Forster,  with  several  of  his 
friends,  taken  prisoner.  Each  side  laid  the  fault  of  beginning 
the  trouble  on  the  other.  The  Scottish  minstrel  sings — 

"  Who  did  invent  that  day  of  play, 

We  need  not  fear  to  find  him  soon, 

For  Sir  John  Forster,  I  dare  well  say, 

Made  us  this  noisome  afternoon." 

Ten  years  later  another  entertainment  of  the  same  kind 
occurred,  which  is  sometimes  mixed  up  with  the  Redesweir. 
On  this  occasion,  Kerr  of  Fernyhurst,  the  Scottish  warden, 
brought  two  thousand  men  to  the  same  tryst,  and  when 
Forster  showed  him  a  letter  from  his  own  King  James, 
ordering  him  to  give  satisfaction  to  the  complaints  of  Henry 
Collingwood,  Fernyhurst  replied  haughtily,  "  I  will  answer 
the  king."  The  wardens,  nevertheless,  proceeded  to  business, 
when  suddenly  the  Scottish  drums  and  fifes  struck  up,  and 
the  foot  musketeers  charged  down  without  warning  upon  the 


REDESDALE  329 

English.  Kerr  himself  remained  inactive,  but  Lord  Francis 
Russell  was  shot,  and  Forster  and  a  hundred  of  his  men  and 
horses  were  carried  off  prisoners  to  Scotland. 

The  position  became  so  intolerable  that  it  was  seriously 
proposed  to  revert  to  the  methods  of  Hadrian  and  Severus, 
and  build  a  rampart  along  this  exposed  part  of  the  Border 
after  the  fashion  of  the  Roman  wall.  But  in  due  course  the 
union  of  the  Crowns,  if  it  did  not  stop  all  Border  foraging, 
terminated  its  international  significance,  strengthened  the 
hands  of  the  officials,  and,  in  short,  reduced  the  business 
to  family  feuds,  and  the  adventures  of  outlaws  and  cattle 
thieves. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
COQUETDALE  TO   WOOLER 

THE  wanderer  who  feels  disposed  to  journey  by  road  from 
Redesdale  to  Wooler,  making  Otterburn,  of  necessity, 
his  starting-point,  will  hardly  encounter  a  dull  mile  in  the  five- 
and-thirty  or  thereabouts  he  would  be  called  upon  to  traverse. 
The  first  two  stages,  divided  by  Rothbury  and  the  Coquet 
valley,  are  mainly  through  a  moorland  country,  much  of 
which  is  bold  and  striking  in  character,  as  well  as  wild. 
That  between  Elsdon  and  the  Coquet,  I  only  know  from  a 
general  survey,  but  a  veteran  shepherd  of  my  acquaintance, 
a  man  of  traditions  and  a  regard  for  the  past  as  well,  I  trust, 
as  for  the  truth,  tells  me  that  in  his  boyhood  it  was  a  notable 
haunt  of  adders,  and  for  that  reason  was,  or  had  been,  in  more 
favour  as  a  goat  than  a  sheep  pasture,  since  the  goat  is  said 
to  have  a  keen  eye  for  an  adder,  and  some  skill  in  destroying  it 
with  a  stamp  of  its  fore  foot.  But  there  are  no  goats  now  on 
Elsdon  moor,  nor  I  fancy  are  the  Cheviot  or  blackfaced  sheep, 
who  have  taken  their  place,  any  longer  annoyed  by  snakes. 

The  Coquet,  as  already  noted,  though  without  pretension 
to  the  size  or  renown  of  Tweed  or  Tyne,  is  nevertheless  in 
some  sort  the  most  representative  Northumbrian  stream. 
Upon  Tweed,  Scotland  has  undoubtedly  greater  claims. 
Durham,  again,  has  some  small  share  in  the  Tyne,  whose 
romance,  however,  is  a  little  obscured  by  the  industrial  orgies 
of  its  lower  waters.  But  the  Coquet  tumbles  pure  and  clean 
through  the  very  heart  of  the  county,  from  the  wilds  of  its 
Cheviot  Borderland  to  the  historic  towers  of  Warkworth  by 
the  sea. 


COQUETDALE  TO   WOOLER  331 

None  of  the  little  inland  towns  of  Northumberland  are 
commonplace  in  situation  if  not  greatly  distinguished  for 
architectural  merit.  Be-castled  Alnwick  on  its  woody  ridge, 
Hexham  climbing  from  its  wide,  fretting  river  to  the  noble 
abbey  that  forms  its  apex,  Wooler  a  very  footstool  of  the 
Cheviots  just  where  they  spring  into  real  mountains,  Berwick, 
if  we  may  venture  on  the  inclusion,  an  epic  in  itself,  Morpeth 
more  peaceful,  but  charming  on  its  bright  trout  stream  in 
the  lap  of  leafy  hills,  are  all  full  of  character.  And  what 
of  Rothbury,  the  last  of  them  !  There  is  room  for  yet  another 
type,  and  it  is  worthily  filled  by  the  clean,  old-fashioned 
town,  straggling  at  ease  along  both  banks  of  the  turbulent 
Coquet,  and  overhung  on  most  sides  by  hills  that  are  not 
merely  of  average  Cheviot  height,  but  more  than  average 
Cheviot  boldness  in  outline  ;  a  town  in  a  deep 'trough  hemmed 
in  by  towering  steeps,  that,  however,  softened  by  lately-planted 
woods,  or  laced  with  enclosures  of  much  older  date  upon 
their  nearer  slopes,  speak  from  their  still  unbridled  summits 
of  back-lying  solitudes,  both  to  the  east  and  to  the  north 
and  to  the  west.  Descending  upon  Rothbury  from  the  high 
ridge  of  the  lonely  moorland  road  to  Alnwick,  more  especially 
in  stormy  weather,  the  whole  situation  suggests  the  conven- 
tional, though  somewhat  banal  epithet  of  "alpine,"  more 
than  any  spot  frequented  by  man  in  all  Northumberland. 
This  is  due,  in  part,  to  the  fine  rugged  summits  of  Simonside 
and  Tosson  hill.  But  the  deep  gorge  in  which  Rothbury 
nestles  presents  altogether  a  fine  effect,  opening  westward  to 
meet  the  Coquet  as  it  comes  gleaming  down  through  green 
meadows,  yet  so  greatly  narrowing  below  the  town  that  for 
some  distance  the  high  road  is  cut  into  the  steep  wooded  hills 
of  Craigside,  Lord  Armstrong's  seat,  while  the  river  boils  in 
rocky  pools  below.  Once  out  of  the  gorge,  however,  save  for 
the  varying  moods  of  this  same  restless  river,  which  are 
mostly  hidden  from  all  but  the  anglers  who  wade  in  its 
stream,  the  long  road  down  the  dale  towards  Warkworth  and 
the  sea,  though  pleasant  enough,  is  a  thought  tame,  and 
does  not  compare  in  interest  with  most  that  we  have  lately 


traversed,  and  the  few  we  may  yet  hope  to  follow,  and 
space  presses.  Brinkburn  Priory,  the  still  ample  ruin  of  an 
Augustinian  house,  picturesquely  seated  by  the  Coquet,  is 
well  worth  a  visit.  Weldon  Bridge,  too,  further  on,  opens  up 
a  characteristic  reach  of  the  river,  both  up  and  down  stream, 
and  is  commanded  by  a  roomy  old  fishing-inn,  which  looks 
as  if  it  might  exude  the  post-prandial  fish-stories  of  genera- 
tions of  exuberant  and  reminiscent  anglers  at  every  pore. 
But  no  rods  rested  handily  against  the  angles  of  the  inn  walls 
the  last  time  I  dallied  there,  and  the  thin  streams  of  the 
Coquet  piped  feeble  airs  against  the  buttresses  of  the  bridge, 
suggestive  neither  of  salmon  nor  of  trout.  A  solitary  angler 
from  some  far  country,  whose  sunburnt  visage  spoke  as 
eloquently  as  his  own  moving  tale  of  his  meritorious  but 
futile  perseverance,  leaned  his  arms  sadly  on  the  central 
parapet  of  the  bridge,  and  sought  consolation  in  tobacco. 
A  few  miles  below,  Felton  Bridge,  a  village  of  some  note  in 
Northumbrian  story,  strides  the  Coquet,  at  a  point,  too,  where 
the  river  has  so  fashioned  its  fretted  channels  as  to  contrive 
an  altogether  alluring  scene. 

The  long,  wide  street,  running  parallel  to  the  finest  trout- 
ing  river  in  Northumberland,  which  comprises  most  of 
Rothbury,  has  a  peaceful,  easy-going  look,  which  even  the 
austerity  of  its  northern  architecture  cannot  dispel.  In 
former  days,  however,  it  was  neither  peaceful  nor  easy-going, 
unless  the  attitude  of  its  turbulent  people  towards  their 
neighbours'  kine  may  be  dismissed  as  unconventional.  Space 
prevents  any  dallying  in  Coquetdale.  Such  we  allowed  our- 
selves in  the  valleys  of  the  Tyne  and  Rede,  and  though  this  is 
not  a  guide-book,  but  a  record  of  desultory  roaming,  I  have 
nevertheless  endeavoured  so  to  order  my  steps,  or  at  any  rate 
my  pen,  as  to  give  as  reasonably  lucid  a  picture  of  past  and  pre- 
sent Northumberland  as  may  be  hoped  for  in  a  brief  compass, 
without  that  amassing  of  facts  which  entails  compression  and 
spells  dulness.  But  the  story  and  atmosphere  of  Coquetdale, 
to-day  and  yesterday  and  long  ago,  is  practically  that  of  the 
Tyne  and  Rede.  Around  and  above  Rothbury  the  same 


COQUETDALE   TO   WOOLER  333 

large-limbed,  taciturn,  horse-loving  graziers  pasture  their 
sheep  upon  a  thousand  hills,  and  their  shorthorns  where  the 
richer  grass  land  of  the  lower  levels  admits  of  their  well-being. 
For  the  Northumbrian  does  not  handle  scrub  stock.  The 
days  are  long  passed  in  Great  Britain,  unless  perhaps  in 
the  extremities  of  Scotland,  where  hardy  runts  are  left  to  eke 
out  an  unprofitable  existence  on  sheep  mountains.  Science, 
competition,  and  experience  have  now  allotted  to  every  class 
of  country  the  animal  that  thrives  best  therein,  and  is  still 
working  out  the  problem.  When  one  considers  the  wealth 
of  skill  and  knowledge  brought  to  bear  on  this  subject,  and 
the  fine  point  to  which  it  has  been  brought  by  able  men 
innumerable,  who  have  devoted  their  lives  to  it,  the  agri- 
cultural theories  emitted  by  callow  citizens  and  narrow- 
minded,  uninstructed  mechanics  on  public  platforms  and  at 
Westminster,  men  not  even  amateur  dabblers  in  a  most 
complicated  science,  are  amazing.  One  asks  one's  self  again 
and  again,  why  are  its  experts  the  only  experts  that  outsiders 
consistently  flout — when  its  records  in  all  countries  are 
richer  in  the  ruin  of  the  ingenuous  and  the  unskilled  than 
those  of  any  trade  under  the  sun  ?  But  that  is  of  no  use ; 
there  must  be  something  about  land  that  turns  the  heads  of 
unsophisticated  but  otherwise  reasonable  people — and  makes 
fools  of  them.  The  greater  part  of  the  cattle  grazed  to-day 
in  Northumberland  are  Irish,  and  in  consequence  of  shorthorn 
pattern,  though  here  and  there  a  dash  of  Kerry  or  some 
other  breed,  crops  up  inevitable  in  herds  of  beasts  collected 
from  innumerable  small  breeders.  But  Ireland,  outside  those 
western  portions  chiefly  exploited  by  the  tourist,  and  of  such 
abiding  service  to  the  politician,  is  a  fine  cattle  country, 
and  every  one  knows  how  its  exported  "  stores "  thrive  on 
English  pastures.  Northumbrian  friends  who  handle  them 
largely  tell  me  that  there  is  some  falling  off  in  the  quality  of  the 
young  animals  that  come  from  those  districts,  where  butter- 
making  is  most  active.  That  calves  should  sometimes  suffer 
under  such  conditions  is  perhaps  inevitable,  but  it  is  at  least 
in  a  good  cause.  It  is  quite  another  thing,  however,  the 


334     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

equanimity  with  which  North  British  farmers  are  contem- 
plating the  possible  extinction  of  their  Irish  rivals,  the  big 
graziers,  inasmuch  as  they  are  the  only  competing  bidders 
for  the  young  cattle  of  the  ordinary  small  Irish  farmer,  and 
materially  help  to  stiffen  the  price.  When  the  latter  and  the 
politician  have  legislated  or  persecuted  their  more  substantial 
neighbour  out  of  existence,  northern  farmers,  who  for  the 
best  of  reasons  have  intimate  knowledge  of  the  Irish  market, 
tell  me  that  the  small  breeders,  always  unable  to  hold  their 
stock  over,  will  then  be  at  their  mercy,  and  the  price  of  Irish 
stores  come  tumbling  down  in  a  manner  wholly  satisfactory 
to  the  Saxon.  That  Nationalist  politicians  or  their  cattle- 
raiding  friends  should  concern  themselves  with  so  practical  a 
forecast  is  not,  I  imagine,  in  the  least  likely.  But  when  the 
awakening  comes,  the  howl  will  be  none  the  less  strident 
because  the  damage  was  self-imposed,  and  we  shall  have,  no 
doubt,  another  Irish  grievance.* 

But  returning  again  to  our  subject,  Coquetdale  has  enjoyed 
the  same  exhilarating  past  as  the  neighbouring  dales  of  which 
I  have  said  so  much.  The  same  kind  of  men,  under  different 
clan  names  for  the  most  part,  have  performed  the  same 
doughty  deeds,  fought  the  Scots  under  Percys  and  Fenwicks, 
and  raided  both  friend  and  foe  with  almost,  if  not  quite, 
equal  assiduity.  The  Coquet,  however,  opened  no  convenient 
pass  into  Scotland,  and  was  not  therefore  so  often  the  passage 
of  invading  armies  as  the  other  valleys  of  the  Middle  March. 
Like  these,  however,  it  is  sprinkled  everywhere  with  the 
fragments  of  ancient  pele  towers  and  bastle  houses,  for  the 
Armstrongs  and  Elliots  were  not  deterred  by  any  want  of  a 
beaten  track.  Half  a  mile  above  the  town,  on  the  hillside,  is 
Whitton,  a  well-preserved  and  large  pele  tower,  though  with 
modern  battlements.  Though  the  arms  of  those  remote 
magnates,  the  Umfravilles,  may  still  be  seen  graven  upon 
its  stones,  it  has  harboured  the  Rectors  of  Rothbury  at  any 
rate  since  the  fourteenth  century.  In  the  eighteenth  it  was 

*  Store  cattle,  too,  from  Ontario,  Quebec,  and  the  maritime  provinces   of 
Canada,  where  small  breeders  abound,  will  no  doubt  be  some  day  admitted. 


COQUETDALE  TO   WOOLER  335 

expanded  by  additions  into  its  present  character  of  a  roomy 
and  pleasant  parsonage.  Just  above  it  is  a  lofty,  narrow 
tower,  known  as  somebody's  "folly,"  which  I  laboriously 
ascended  by  a  spiral  staircase,  and  found  my  reward  in  a  fine 
outlook  up  Coquetdale,  and  over  the  surrounding  mountains, 
all  sombre  then  under  a  dark,  uneasy  sky.  Rothbury  Church 
is  mostly  rebuilt,  but  around  it  have  gathered  some  interest- 
ing memories  of  the  pious  Bernard  Gilpin,  who  preached  here 
at  a  time  when  it  was  hardly  safe  to  tell  even  spiritual  truths 
to  dalesmen,  if  they  reflected  too  strongly  on  their  cherished 
customs.  On  one  occasion  two  hostile  greynes,  attracted  by 
the  eloquence  of  the  good  doctor,  were  brought  into  dangerous 
proximity  in  the  body  of  the  church,  and  were  defiantly 
rattling  their  scabbards.  A  battle  in  the  holy  edifice  seemed 
so  imminent,  that  the  fearless  northern  apostle  left  his  pulpit 
and,  placing  himself  between  the  intending  brawlers,  rated 
them  soundly  in  a  fashion  they  were  not  accustomed  to.  He 
succeeded  at  length  in  securing  a  truce  for  so  long  a  time  as 
he  should  remain  in  the  country,  which  was  something 
perhaps,  though  not  much,  and  he  won  so  greatly  on  their 
respect,  that  a  man  who  took  a  fancy  to  his  horse  was 
actually  forced  by  public  option  to  restore  it.  On  another 
occasion  he  was  confronted  by  the  well-known  glove  of 
defiance  hanging  over  the  altar,  and  ordered  the  sexton  to 
remove  it.  This  was,  of  course,  a  proceeding  no  Border 
sexton  would  have  ventured  on,  so  Gilpin  took  it  down  him- 
self, fastened  it  on  his  breast,  and  proceeded  to  harangue  his 
turbulent  congregation  on  the  iniquity  of  their  doings,  and 
the  obvious  sacrilege  of  making  the  holiest  spot  in  a  church 
the  medium  for  flaunting  their  sanguinary  passions. 

Rothbury  should  be  a  good  centre  for  exploring  this 
portion  of  the  Northumbrian  borderland,  and  there  are  one 
or  two  respectable  hotels  here.  But  though  I  have  never  had 
cause  to  seek  even  a  night's  rest  at  Rothbury,  I  have  traversed 
Coquetdale  nearly  to  its  head  as  well  as  to  its  mouth  more 
than  once.  The  former  enterprise  is  much  the  most  engaging, 
as  will  doubtless  be  assumed  ;  indeed,  one  of  my  pleasantest 


336     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

memories  of  the  county  is  a  delightful  round  on  a  gorgeous 
autumn  day,  when  the  blend  of  valley  verdure  and  surround- 
ing moorland  was  illumined  from  morn  till  eve  by  a  brilliant 
sun  shining  from  a  blue  and  cloudless  sky.  We  passed  the 
ruinous  fragment  of  Harbottle  Castle,  perched  on  its  high 
mound  above  the  now  peaceful  and  picturesque  village  of 
turbulent  memories,  concerning  which  much  could  be  written 
had  I  taken  Coquetdale,  and  not  its  neighbours,  as  a  type  of 
the  Border  valley.  But  that  much  would  be  of  practically 
the  same  nature  as  the  adventures  which  have  so  plentifully 
sprinkled  my  more  recent  chapters.  So  when  the  critic  whom 
circumstances  have  perchance  made  more  familiar  with 
Coquetdale  than  with  those  of  the  Middle  March  chides  me, 
as  a  long  experience  enables  me  to  predict  with  tolerable 
certainty  that  he  will,  for  an  apparent  sin  of  omission,  I  must 
remind  him  again  that  this  is  not  a  guide-book.  And,  further- 
more, that  despite  the  indisputable  charms  of  Coquet  and  its 
historic  claims,  I  conceive  the  valleys  of  the  Rede  and  Tyne 
to  be  yet  more  important,  suggestive,  and  more  generally 
inspiring. 

On  this  occasion  we  looked  down  on  the  Coquet,  meander- 
ing with  unwonted  restraint  through  the  sunny  parklands  of 
Harbottle  Hall,  the  seat  of  the  Clennels,  and  soon  afterwards, 
at  the  junction  of  the  Alwen  and  Coquet,  followed  the  former 
stream  into  a  wilder  country,  and  halted  for  a  space  at 
Alwinton  within  the  edge  of  the  Cheviots.  Hence,  turning 
eastward  along  the  fringe  of  the  wilderness,  we  pursued  tor- 
tuous and  unfenced  byways  where  fir  woods  murmured  and 
burns  gurgled  on  stony  beds.  Above  the  hills  shone  green 
and  purple  in  the  bright  sunlight,  for  the  bloom  was  even  yet 
on  the  heather,  and  we  passed,  in  due  course,  the  sequestered 
manor-house,  practically  rebuilt,  of  Clennel,  whence  sprang 
the  family  of  that  name.  A  mile  or  so  beyond  we  traversed 
the  grounds  of  an  old  country  house,  which  lay  back  with  its 
encircling  woodlands  against  the  Cheviots,  and  interested  me 
infinitely,  that  of  Biddlestone,  still  owned  by  the  Selbys.  But 
much  more  than  that,  it  was  also  the  Osbaldiston  Hall  of 


COQUETDALE  TO  WOOLER  337 

Scott's  Rob  Roy.  Like  many  other  people,  no  doubt,  I 
had  treasured  throughout  life  an  Osbaldiston  Hall  of  my  own 
imagining,  and  I  had  now  to  picture  Di  Vernon  galloping 
over  strange  pastures,  that  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  gave  me 
something  of  a  thrill  as  I  found  myself  listening  for  the  echo 
of  her  horse's  hoofs.  A  secluded  spot,  and  far  enough  from 
the  madding  crowd,  is  this  Osbaldiston  of  Scott's  fancy  as 
things  are  now — ten  miles,  that  is,  from  a  little  station  on  a 
cross  line,  with  nothing  on  the  other  but  interminable  moor- 
land and  the  pathless  barrier  that  shuts  out  Scotland.  But 
what  we  moderns  call  "  out-of-the-way  "  had  little  significance 
in  Di  Vernon's  time.  There  were  plenty  of  neighbours  then, 
and  no  daily  newspapers  to  upset  the  content  of  country 
people  with  accounts  of  gay  doings  in  distant  centres,  while 
a  few  miles  more  or  less  were  nothing  to  a  horse-riding 
people.  Life  was  full  enough  with  family  feuds  and  sport 
and  agriculture,  which  last  pursuit  appealed  in  those  days  to 
every  class,  and  found  exhilarating  expression  in  the  frequent 
fairs  and  markets.  Good  liquor,  too,  an  all-important  item, 
was  abundant,  and  in  a  smuggling  country  like  this  the  many- 
bottled  squire  had  a  positive  advantage  over  his  contempo- 
raries in  more  populous  districts.  After  three  or  four  o'clock, 
at  any  rate,  he  was  supremely  happy  till  he  laid  himself  or 
was  laid  to  rest,  and  the  toasting  of  the  king  either  on  this 
or  the  other  side  of  the  water  was  a  real  labour  of  love  that 
never  palled.  Every  one's  position  was  so  automatically 
fixed,  without  pretension  or  self-consciousness,  that  social  jars 
and  heart-burnings  must  have  been  almost  unknown.  The 
squire  gave  way  to  the  lord  who  went  to  court  and  spoke 
another  tongue  as  a  matter  of  course,  while  the  more  respect- 
able folk  just  outside  technical  gentility  hobnobbed  with  the 
squire  to  their  mutual  satisfaction,  for  the  very  reason  that 
no  troublesome  social  complications  could  possibly  arise 
where  pretensions  were  impossible.  Hearts  were  then  at  one 
in  the  matter  of  foxes,  sheep,  and  cattle,  and  every  tongue 
wagged  pretty  much  in  the  same  vernacular.  The  country 
most  assuredly  was  not  dull  according  to  its  lights  in  those 


338     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

days.  Such  notions  are  the  product  of  railroads,  and  were 
helped  perhaps  by  the  advent  of  new  owners,  who  had  to 
justify  their  existence  by  an  assumption  of  unnatural  exclu- 
siveness  towards  the  class  from  which  they  had  sprung. 

We  were  bound  on  this  occasion  for  Whittingham,  ten 
miles  from  Biddlestone  on  the  Alnwick  and  Wooler  line,  and 
passed  through  a  thinly  peopled  country  of  large  farms, 
mainly  in  grass,  having  all  the  time  upon  our  left  and  some 
way  off  a  high  spur  of  the  Cheviots,  which  craned  eastward 
to  the  valley  of  the  Till,  with  the  upper  and  wilder  waters  of 
that  historic  stream  washing  its  further  side.  We  more  than 
once  put  up  black  game  by  the  roadside,  for,  unlike  the  red 
grouse,  they  constantly  haunt  those  large,  high-lying,  enclosed 
pasture  fields  adjoining  the  moors,  known  by  sportsmen  as 
the  "  white  grass  "  lands.  We  encountered,  too,  a  farmer,  of 
abounding  acreage  in  those  parts,  and  well  known  to  my 
companion,  who  was  galloping  a  young  horse  across  country 
from  a  sheep  sale  at  Rothbury,  an  incident  only  worth  noting 
perhaps  as  typical  of  life  in  this  breezy  land,  and  in  very  few 
others  nowadays  in  Great  Britain.  Away  on  the  right,  later 
on,  we  could  see  Callaley,  and  a  couplet  rose  inconsequently 
to  my  lips  from  some  ballad  otherwise  long  forgotten — 

"  Mourn,  mourn,  Callaley,  for  the  gentle  Clavering, 
Where  life  at  Staunton  cross  the  foul  Scots  have  riven." 

The  Claverings  have  long  gone,  but  they  held  Callaley  for 
centuries,  and  were  much  more  than  Border  lairds. 

The  infant  Aln  in  the  mean  time  accompanied  us  down 
the  valley  on  our  left,  watering  the  park  lands  of  Eslington, 
where  Lord  Ravensworth's  early  Georgian  mansion  stands 
on  the  site  of  a  former  pele  tower  of  the  Collingwoods. 
Whittingham,  hard  by,  is  among  the  few  leafy  and 
picturesque  villages  of  Northumberland.  It  has  a  fine  church, 
too,  lifted  high  up  amid  a  bristling  graveyard,  where  the 
passion  of  the  village  fathers  of  the  Border  for  decorating 
their  tombstones  with  shears  and  pickaxes,  spades,  hammers, 
and  skulls  is  as  conspicuous  as  elsewhere.  Restoration  of  a 


COQUETDALE   TO   WOOLER  339 

more  than  usually  ruthless  kind  fell  upon  the  building  sixty 
years  ago.  But,  as  a  venerable  native  informed  us,  the 
ravagers  were  happily  unable  to  destroy  the  lower  half  of  the 
tower,  which  contains  some  Saxon  work,  for  the  solidity  of 
the  workmanship,  and  it  remains  to  outlive  doubtless  the 
handiwork  of  the  early  Victorians  in  the  nave,  which  I  did 
not  see  had  I  wished  to,  for  the  church,  as  usual,  was  bolted 
and  barred  as  if  the  Scots  were  hourly  expected.  There  is 
also  a  pele  tower  in  the  village,  now  preserved  as  an  alms- 
house,  once  the  property  of  the  Herons  of  Chipchase,  and 
a  stronghold  of  the  village  warriors  in  times  of  stress.  It  is 
now,  as  the  inscription  tells  us,  the  refuge  of  its  deserving 
poor. 

The  direct  route,  however,  from  Rothbury  into  the  head 
of  this  long  strip  of  Northumberland,  opening  northward 
to  the  Tweed  and  shut  in  between  the  Cheviots  and  the 
central  range,  runs  over  moorland  for  almost  the  whole  eight 
miles  of  its  course.  Only  one  or  two  lonely  farmhouses  break 
the  solitude,  and  the  road  clings  for  much  of  the  way  to 
steep  slopes,  where  heather,  bracken,  and  grey  upstanding 
crags  make  a  fine  blend  of  colour.  Vistas  of  hills  and  dales 
remote  greet  one  as  the  road  tops  each  succeeding  ridge,  and 
the  wild,  mysterious  borderland  of  Scotland  displays  against 
the  skyline  every  point  of  its  long  billowy  progress  from 
Tweed  to  Tyne. 

Descending  from  the  moors,  where  the  road  turns  away 
eastward  over  yet  continuous  uplands  to  Alnwick  and 
dropping  into  the  head  of  this  long,  hill-girt  trough  of  north- 
western Northumberland,  the  ruinous  twelfth-century  castle 
of  Ellingham  stands  with  stern  significance  at  the  edge  of  the 
waste.  An  ambitious  pele  tower,  perhaps,  rather  than  a 
castle,  it  contains  the  remains  of  much  fine  vaulting  and 
graceful  arching.  Massive,  stately,  and  still  preserving  a 
good  part  of  its  lofty  walls,  it  has  stood  thus  for  centuries 
neglected  and  forlorn.  No  country  house  or  homestead,  as 
is  so  often  the  case,  has  gathered  round  this  abandoned 
fortress.  Aloof  and  detached,  as  if  still  keeping  a  belated 


watch  upon  the  deep  pass  that  cleaves  the  moors  behind 
towards  Coquetdale,  it  remains  a  singularly  eloquent  monu- 
ment of  turbulent  ages,  even  in  a  land  where  such  monuments 
are  so  profusely  sprinkled.  I  have  seen  it  many  times,  and 
have  indeed  passed  by  it  since  commencing  this  very  chapter, 
in  a  June  so  abnormally  late  that  the  scattered  ash  trees  near 
by  showed  no  sign  of  leaf.  But  I  prefer  to  recall  it  on  a 
certain  dark  day  in  late  autumn,  when  the  first  withered  leaves 
were  whirling  around  its  battlements  in  a  north-west  gale. 
For  it  was  then,  like  all  such  places,  in  its  element.  Of  its 
story  I  know  nothing,  except  that  it  is  now,  I  believe,  in 
possession  of  Swinburnes.  Nor,  to  my  regret  and  reproach, 
have  I  visited  the  little  church  on  the  slope  above,  which  is 
ancient  and  unspoiled  enough  to  resent  such  an  omission,  and 
lies  on  my  conscience.  As  we  go  north  towards  Wooler, 
with  the  Alnwick  and  Cornhill  line  hugging  the  Cheviot 
foothills  on  our  left,  an  abandoned  country  house  of  distinc- 
tion and  quite  imposing  dimensions,  and  no  sufficient  measure 
of  age  or  decay  to  account  for  the  spectacle,  strikes  an  uncanny 
note  in  so  delectable  a  landscape.  No  tragic  tale  of  any 
kind  is  associated  with  a  situation  unique  in  my  experience, 
for  by  abandoned  I  do  not  mean  merely  to  the  house  agent, 
but  with  obvious  deliberation  to  nature  and  the  elements,  its 
very  windows  having  been  removed.  I  have  heard  the  story, 
which  I  think  is  quite  commonplace,  but  the  effect  at  any 
rate  is  startling  to  the  casual  traveller.  The  shallow  valley 
of  the  Ain,  which  little  river  comes  bubbling  up  out  of 
Whittingham,  where  we  left  it  so  recently,  crosses  the  head 
of  this  long,  northward-trending  depression  so  soon  to  be 
occupied  by  the  Till.  Some  three  miles  on,  after  passing  the 
spot  where  Surrey's  army  first  encamped  on  their  march  from 
Alnwick  to  Flodden,  a  gentle  descent  through  a  wooded  gorge 
leads  down  to  the  village  of  Hedgeley,  where  the  Till,  just 
here  the  Breamish,  runs  with  impetuous,  peaty  waters  to 
change  its  character  with  its  name  amid  the  fat  meadows  of 
the  broadening  vale. 

Here,  too,  a  mile   beyond  the  bridge   and   on  the  left 


COQUETDALE  TO   WOOLER  341 

of  the  road,  was  fought  in  April,  1464,  the  battle  of 
Hedgeley  Moor,  where  the  gallant  Ralph  Percy,  basely 
deserted  by  his  Lancastrian  friends,  was  left  to  perish  in 
the  unequal  combat  "with  the  bird  in  his  bosom,"  as  has 
been  already  related  in  these  pages.  Across  the  road  in 
a  small  wood  stands  an  ancient  stone  pillar,  engraven  with 
the  Percy  arms,  and  known  as  Percy's  cross,  which  marks 
by  repute  the  spot  where  he  met  his  death,  commemorated 
by  more  than  one  Border  ballad.  We  are  here  on  the  edge 
of  the  country  explored  much  earlier  in  these  wanderings. 
For  to  the  east  of  the  valley  are  the  Chillingham  moors, 
to  whose  feet  the  Till,  abandoning  the  Cheviot  side,  has  now 
meandered.  Country  houses  embowered  in  woods,  with  the 
less  ornate  abodes  of  large  farmers,  show  here  and  there. 
The  Lil  burn  dives  under  a  new  bridge  in  place  of  one  it 
recently  swept  away  in  a  burst  of  unwonted  fury,  and  runs 
down  under  the  walls  and  woodlands  of  Lilburn  tower,  a 
well-wooded  seat  of  one  branch  of  the  Collingwoods.  The 
upper  Cheviots,  with  their  second  highest  and  always  finest 
peak  of  Hedgehope,  cease  to  be  distant,  though  always 
constant  friends,  and  confront  us  once  more  at  quite  close 
quarters.  Two  miles  along  the  levels  is  Wooler  haugh, 
where  the  English  army  lay  before  Flodden  fight ;  and  the 
little  town  itself,  resting  on  the  very  toe  of  the  greater 
Cheviots,  offers  its  modest  hospitalities  at  the  summit  of  a 
brief  but  somewhat  breathless  ascent. 

I  have  brought  the  reader  by  unfrequented  roads  from 
Tynedale  to  the  little  Cheviot  metropolis,  if  only  in  rapid 
and  sketchy  fashion,  that  he  may  form  at  any  rate  some 
notion  of  what  like  is  the  country,  which  may  be  roughly 
described  as  the  Rothbury  district.  For  myself,  I  went  from 
Bellingham  to  a  fortnight  of  almost  unalloyed  sunshine  and 
a  further  acquaintance  with  the  north-east  coast  between 
Berwick  and  Warkworth.  I  was  glad  on  the  whole  that 
earlier  intentions  had  been  baffled,  and  ,that  the  fates  had 
allotted  me  the  whole  month  of  October  at  Wooler.  October 
is  a  risky  month,  but  this  one  was  kind  if  a  trifle  sad,  and 


THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

once  or  twice  prodigiously  fierce.  This,  however,  was  well, 
for  I  would  not  wish  for  thirty  days  of  Italian  skies  in  the 
Cheviots,  however  desirable  they  might  be,  let  us  say,  at 
Brighton.  English  hills  can  look  bewitching  in  unruffled 
sunshine,  particularly  in  autumn  sunshine,  but  one  would 
fain  see  them  in  all  or  in  almost  all  their  moods  ;  and  the 
Cheviots  during  this  particular  October  gave  us  most  of  theirs. 

I  do  not  know  whence  Wooler  derived  its  name,  but  the 
present  form  of  it  is  singularly  felicitous,  as  it  lives  and 
moves  and  has  its  being  in  sheep,  while  what  interest  it  may 
have  to  spare  is  expended  in  cattle.  It  stands  lifted  up  some 
two  or  three  hundred  feet  above  the  valleys  of  the  Wooler 
burn  and  Till,  which  unite  beneath  it  a  mile  away  ;  and  its 
back  gardens  open  almost  directly  on  to  the  Cheviots,  which 
lie  piled  up  in  ascending  heaps  behind  it.  Its  air  has  some 
reputation,  while  in  former  days  invalids  repaired  hither  in 
considerable  numbers  and  in  pious  faith  to  drink  goats'  milk 
whey,  the  goat  at  that  time  sharing  with  the  sheep  the 
occupation  of  the  mountain  pastures.  The  situation  of 
Wooler  is  beyond  question  delightful,  as  well  as  salubrious, 
though  there  is  nothing  of  the  picturesque  in  the  few  unre- 
markable little  streets,  which  empty  themselves  from  various 
directions  and  at  various  gradients  into  its  ample  market- 
place. Its  one  or  two  conspicuous  hotels  wear  an  uncom- 
promisingly old-fashioned  air,  more  suggestive  of  protracted 
deals  in  Cheviot  ewes  than  the  entertainment  of  summer 
visitors ;  though  I  must  not  forget  the  Tankerville  Arms, 
generally  known  as  the  Cottage,  half  a  mile  from  town, 
which  is  of  another  class  and  equal  to  any  present  demands 
of  this  kind. 

Wooler,  as  I  remarked  long  ago,  is  quite  full  in  August ; 
that  is  to  say,  the  grey  stone  villas  which  have  sprung  up 
in  recent  years  are  full,  besides,  no  doubt,  many  a  modest 
harbourage  unsuspected  by  the  stranger  within  its  original 
limits.  The  place  has  no  story  worth  mentioning,  and  the 
scant  remains  of  a  castle,  which  probably  preceded  the  town, 
have  little  to  say  for  themselves.  The  church  is  eighteenth 


COQUETDALE  TO   WOOLER  343 

century  and  of  no  architectural  interest  whatever.  Forster 
and  Derwentwater,  with  Lord  Kenmure's  Scots,  lay  here  for 
a  short  time  in  the  'fifties,  so  later  on  did  General  Carpenter, 
who  was  hunting  them.  But  this  was  a  paltry  business 
compared  to  the  great  deeds  of  arms  that  were  done  within 
sight  of  whatever  town  there  may  have  been  here  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  For  it  was  intimately  concerned  with  the 
most  famous  of  Anglo-Scottish  battles,  while  the  hill  of 
Humbleton,  just  outside  Wooler,  saw  the  Percy's  revenge 
on  the  Douglas  for  Otterburn,  and  a  sanguinary  struggle  that 
for  its  tactics  stands  perhaps  unique  in  mediseval  warfare. 

This  uppermost  point  and  finest  portion  of  the  Cheviots 
overlaps  the  Scottish  border  on  its  western  side,  and  just 
touches  it  at  its  northern  extremity.  It  may  also  be 
described  as  a  triangle,  within  which  the  hills  are  grouped 
and  shaped  in  a  bolder  and  somewhat  different  fashion  from 
the  long  sweeps  and  rolling  ridges  that  for  the  most  part 
distinguish  the  same  range  as  it  stretches  its  broader  wastes 
south-westward  to  the  Tyne.  Here  the  steep,  but  not  actually 
rugged,  hills  make  a  bold  display  of  their  respective  crowns 
and  shoulders,  spreading  to  right  and  left,  and  rising  one 
above  the  other  to  the  centre  of  the  group,  where,  in  curious 
contrast,  the  long  hog-back  of  the  "muckle  Cheviot" — the 
monarch  of  the  range — dominates  the  whole  at  an  altitude  of 
some  two  thousand  seven  hundred  feet.  From  Wooler  north- 
ward, a  procession  of  singularly  bold  hills,  each  about  a 
thousand  feet  in  height,  rise  like  an  array  of  flanking  buttresses 
to  the  mass  behind.  From  their  base  eastward  to  the  central 
range  of  north  Northumberland,  stretch  two  or  three  miles 
of  level  valley,  largely  meadow  land.  Through  this  the  Till 
winds  its  snake-like  course  in  short  gravelly  eddies  and  long 
deep  pools  northward  to  the  Tweed,  on  approaching  which  the 
low  ground  changes  into  a  broken  surface,  throwing  up  high 
ridges  of  woodland  or  pasture,  the  most  conspicuous  of  which 
is  Flodden  Edge. 

But  for  some  miles  north  of  Wooler,  this  front  rank  of 
the  Cheviots,  like  a  chain  of  fortresses,  as  indeed  there  is 


344     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

ample  evidence  that  they  were  in  times  agone,  look  down 
over  the  level  fertile  tract  that,  till  the  seventeenth  century, 
was  a  wide  waste  known  as  Millfield  marsh.  Half  quaking 
mosses,  half  ragged  tracts  of  broom,  breast  high,  it  played  a 
conspicuous  part  in  the  partisan  warfare  of  the  Eastern  March, 
and  served  the  Northumbrians  well.  Only  a  fortnight  before 
Flodden,  when  Surrey's  army  was  not  yet  in  being,  a  large 
body  of  over-confident  Scots  were  ambushed  by  a  local  force, 
and  left  five  hundred  of  their  numbers  dead  within  its  recesses. 

The  nearest  of  these  menacing  fortress-like  Cheviot  hills 
to  Wooler  is  Humbleton,  known  betimes  in  history  as 
Homildon.  A  mile  walk  along  the  ridge  on  which  the  town 
is  planted,  brings  one  to  its  foot,  and  here,  where  is  now  a 
scant  group  of  cottages,  are  the  traces  of  a  once  considerable 
occupation,  and  tradition  has  it  that  the  present  town  of 
Wooler  succeeded  to  an  earlier  one  of  some  consideration,  as 
things  went  then,  upon  this  deserted  site.  But  to  me,  when  I 
first  mounted  the  steep  slope  of  heath  and  fern,  strangely 
fashioned  by  the  forces  of  Nature  into  terraces  of  curiously 
artificial  aspect,  the  speculations  of  the  local  antiquary  con- 
cerning the  foot  or  the  summit  of  Humbleton  Hill  vanished 
as  trifles  before  the  stern  realities  of  this  famous  spot.  Indeed, 
I  had  formerly  been  so  much  concerned  with  the  wars  which 
in  another  part  of  England  shook  the  usurped  throne  of 
Henry  the  Fourth,  that  this  field  of  Humbleton,  so  intimately 
connected  with  them  as  it  was,  and  so  often  pictured  in  my 
mind  with  all  its  details,  held  me  by  a  spell  very  different 
from  the  mild  emotion  which  I  had  experienced  at  Biddlestone 
Hall. 

Homildon,  or  Humbleton,  Hill,  as  a  border  fight  was,  in 
several  respects,  a  great  one.  For  one  thing,  it  was  the  long- 
delayed  revenge  of  the  Percies  for  Otterburn.  But  more 
than  this,  it  was  the  cause  of  the  battle  of  Shrewsbury  ;  while, 
as  a  military  performance,  it  was  greater  still,  being,  I  believe, 
the  only  recorded  occasion  where  archers  alone,  without  the 
assistance  of  any  other  arm,  defeated  and  routed  with 
slaughter  a  brave,  well-armed,  and  disciplined  force  of  four 


COQUETDALE  TO   WOOLER  345 

or  five  times  their  number.  The  fact  that  these  archers  were 
mainly  Welshmen  must  have  in  some  measure  qualified  this 
hour  of  triumph  for  Hotspur,  and  that  he  was  forced  by  his 
friends  to  be  little  more  than  a  spectator  in  the  fight  must 
have  been  unspeakably  galling.  The  well-known  ballad 
alludes  to  these  indomitable  bowmen  as  coming  from  "  the 
three  shires," — the  shires  that  is  of  Bamburgh,  Hexham, 
and  Norham.  Border  ballads,  however,  are  as  inaccurate  as 
they  are  racy  and  fascinating,  and  as  unblushingly  patriotic 
as  one  would  expect  and  wish  them  to  be.  The  Northum- 
brian historian,  Mr.  Bates,  however,  consulted  the  muster- 
rolls,  and  is  forced,  he  tells  us,  to  admit,  at  the  expense  of 
local  patriotism,  that  the  victors  of  Humbleton  were  chiefly 
Welshmen.  There  is  nothing  remarkable  in  their  prowess, 
as,  till  the  wars  of  Edward  the  Third,  the  Welsh  and  their 
Borderers  were  not  only  the  best  archers  in  England,  but 
almost  the  only  ones  of  much  account.  Edward  the  First 
placed  his  main  dependence  on  them  in  his  Scottish  wars. 
The  rest  of  dismounted  England  learnt  shooting  and  dis- 
cipline in  the  fourteenth  century,  when  the  long-bow  was 
perfected.  Nor  was  there  anything  at  all  strange  in  Hotspur's 
having  eighteen  hundred  Welshmen  as  mercenaries,  since  he 
had  just  been  endeavouring  to  keep  the  peace  in  Wales  for 
Henry  the  Fourth,  during  the  beginning  of  the  disturbances 
that  resulted  in  the  long  wars  of  Owen  Glyndwr.  He  had 
now  come  north  to  operate  against  the  Scots,  and  that  he 
should  remove  from  the  Welsh  Marches,  all  agog  for  Richard 
the  Second,  still  thought  there  to  be  alive,  or  gathering 
enthusiastically  to  the  standard  of  Glyndwr  a  body  of  its 
best  archers  for  use  against  the  Scots,  was  a  natural  and  even 
a  political  move.  At  any  rate,  he  marched  with  them  and 
a  strong  force  of  knights,  spearmen,  and  men-at-arms  from 
Bamburgh,  and  intercepted  ten  thousand  Scots,  returning 
laden  with  booty  from  a  raid  to  the  Tyne.  They  were  the 
cream  of  a  larger  army,  and  commanded  by  that  Archibald, 
Earl  Douglas,  whose  lifelong  ill-luck  in  battle  was  a  byword 
in  his  day.  This  was  on  September  13,  1402,  and  the  Scots 


346     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

took  up  a  position  on  the  lofty  crest  and  slopes  of  Humble- 
ton,  where  they  could  see  the  English  army  approaching 
from  the  direction  of  Millfield.  It  is  said  that  Hotspur,  who 
had  with  him  his  father  and  the  Scottish  Earl  of  March, 
seized  the  summit  of  the  adjoining  hill,  which  would  be  that 
of  Akeld,  an  apparently  superfluous  and  most  unlikely  pro- 
ceeding, unless  their  object  had  been  merely  to  seek  a  safe 
refuge  of  defence,  instead  of  being,  as  they  actually  were, 
wholly  bent  on  attack  ;  and  this,  too,  when  a  deep  and 
almost  precipitous  dene,  channelled  by  a  mountain  burn, 
divides  the  two. 

The  English,  we  may  fairly  assume,  drew  up  at  the  foot  of 
Humbleton  Hill,  probably  just  above  the  present  high  road  to 
Millfield,  and  to  the  right  of  the  farm  buildings.  The  double 
tier  of  large  fields  that  trends  up  to  the  edge  of  the  open 
mountain  land,  from  which  the  terraced  breast  of  the  historic 
hill  springs  sharply  up  for  another  five  or  six  hundred  feet, 
was  almost  certainly  the  station  of  Hotspur's  force,  while  the 
Scots  must  have  been  gathered  in  dense  array  on  the  summit 
and  slopes  above.  Just  as,  a  century  later,  at  Flodden,  whose 
green  crest  then  rose  obscure  and  unknown  to  fame  in  the 
rear  of  the  English,  the  Scots,  at  Humbleton,  were  cut  off 
by  their  enemies  from  the  fords  and  bridges  of  the  Tweed, 
twelve  miles  away,  that  alone  opened  the  path  to  Scotland. 
At  Flodden,  though  a  large,  they  were  a  somewhat  motley 
and  unassimilated  host,  divided  in  council,  and  with  no 
stimulating  rivalry.  The  Scots  on  Humbleton  were  a  homo- 
geneous company,  hardy  Borderers,  all  or  most  of  them  ;  their 
own  chief,  a  Douglas,  was  at  their  head,  while  a  Percy  defied 
them  in  the  vale  below.  It  was  in  fact  Otterburn  over  again, 
but  with  a  different  Douglas  and  in  the  daylight.  The 
armour  of  the  Scottish  knights,  we  are  told,  was  new  and 
costly,  some  of  it  having  been  three  years  in  the  makers' 
hands,  sufficient  testimony  to  the  formidable  weapon  the 
long-bow  had  now  become  in  the  hands  of  expert  archers. 
In  those  of  the  amateur,  we  hardly  need  telling  by  those 
who  have  made  a  study  of  its  history,  it  was  quite  as  harmless 


COQUETDALE  TO  WOOLER  347 

as  a  modern  rifle  is,  and  seems  likely  to  remain,  in  the  hands 
of  the  vast  majority  of  Englishmen  till  they  have  had  a  salu- 
tary lesson.  But  its  effect  at  Humbleton  is  almost  incredible 
hearing,  endorsed  though  it  be  by  every  account  of  the  battle  ; 
why  the  Scots,  with  their  superior  numbers  and  advantageous 
position,'did  not  take  the  initiative  we  may  not  know.  But  as  it 
was,  these  eighteen  hundred  archers  were  first  thrown  forward 
and  then  advanced  rapidly  up  the  hill  by  companies,  pouring 
in  flight  upon  flight,  with  an  effect  so  deadly  as  to  seemingly 
paralyze  all  action  on  the  part  of  their  enemies.  The  lighter 
armour,  the  leather  or  quilted  jackets  of  the  spearmen,  were 
perforated  like  paper.  Even  the  best  armour,  say  the  Scottish 
accounts,  was  no  avail  against  the  penetration  of  these  terrible 
clothyard  shafts  ;  Lord  Archibald  Douglas'  notorious  ill-luck 
may  not  altogether,  perhaps,  be  disconnected  with  some  lack 
in  leadership  or  initiative,  or  in  presence  of  mind.  Perhaps 
the  Scottish  Borderers  had  never  faced  such  shooting,  for 
there  were  no  braver  men  or  hardier  tried  soldiers  in  the 
whole  world.  If  these  archers  were  Welsh  Borderers,  as  Mr. 
Bates  says  they  were,  probably  they  never  had.  At  any  rate, 
a  helpless  confusion  reigned  among  them,  and  the  slaughter 
continued  till  a  certain  knight,  named  Swinton,  cried  out, 
"  Oh !  my  brave  countrymen,  what  fascination  has  seized  you 
that  you  stand  to  be  shot  at  like  deer,  instead  of  displaying 
your  ancient  courage  and  meeting  your  enemies  hand  to 
hand.  Let  those  who  will  follow  me,  that  we  may  either  gain 
the  victory  or  die."  An  affecting  incident  is  then  recorded 
by  a  chronicler;  for  Adam  Gordon,  who  was  at  feud  with 
Swinton,  was  so  stirred  by  the  latter's  valour  that  he  fell  on 
his  knees  before  him  and  begged  to  receive  knighthood  from 
the  bravest  and  wisest  of  that  order  in  Britain.  After  that 
the  two  reconciled  foes,  together  with  Douglas  and  as  many 
others  as  would  follow  them,  charged  down  the  hill.  But  the 
archers  retired  slowly  before  them  with  perfect  discipline,  and 
continued  to  pour  in  such  a  hail  of  arrows  that  the  charge 
spent  itself  in  wounds  and  death,  Douglas  himself  being  hit 
in  five  places  and  losing  an  eye.  After  this  the  Scots  seemed 


348     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

to  have  descended  the  hill  on  its  further  flank,  in  the  hope  of 
more  successfully  combating  the  enemy  on  level  ground. 
Hotspur,  now  panting  for  the  fray,  prepared  to  charge  with  all 
his  horse  and  men-at-arms  and  drive  the  half-won  victory  home. 
But  Lord  March,  who  knew  his  countrymen  better,  seized  the 
bridle  of  the  impetuous  Northumbrian  chieftain  and  per- 
suaded him  to  leave  the  archers  yet  awhile  to  continue  the 
fight.  These  valiant  companies,  who  had  suffered  practically 
nothing,  now  swerved  from  the  hill  and  marched  out  across 
the  lower  slopes  and  levels  to  meet  the  reforming  Scots.  The 
same  tactics  were  repeated  on  the  flat  that  had  been  followed 
on  the  hill,  with  the  same  results.  The  Scots  seem  to  have 
again  attempted  to  break  the  lines,  but  were  shot  down  as 
modern  cavalry,  particularly  dispirited  cavalry,  might  be  in 
charging  columns  of  riflemen.  A  panic  seems  at  length  to 
have  set  in,  and  the  routed  Shots  to  have  set  their  faces  for 
the  Tweed  before  a  bridle  was  shaken  on  the  English  side  or 
a  sword  was  drawn.  A  thousand  were  left  dead  upon  the 
field,  and  five  hundred  drowned  in  the  Tweed,  which  suggests 
that  the  pursuit  was  carrid  far,  though  one  might  well  fancy  the 
chronicler  should  have  written  Till  for  Tweed.  A  large  frag- 
ment of  rock,  known  as  the  Bendor  stone,  stands  in  the  middle 
of  a  field  just  below  the  road  and  is  held  to  mark  the  place  of 
the  final  discomfiture.  The  field,  at  any  rate,  bears  the  sug- 
gestive name  of  Red  Riggs,  and  the  stone  is  believed,  by  those 
of  the  peasants  who  still  hold  to  ancient  faiths,  to  go  round 
on  certain  occasions  with  the  sun.  The  crop  of  prisoners  was 
great  and  valuable.  Besides  Douglas  himself,  two  earls,  two 
barons,  eighty  knights,  and  many  others  worthy  of  ransom 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Percies. 

"  In  bluid-red  clouds  the  sun  arose 

Which  saw  that  fatal  day, 
Where  breathless  on  the  green  hill  side 
Fu  mony  a  braw  Scot  lay. 

"  For  sair  the  English  bowmen  gall'd 

The  Van  that  ungeared  stood, 
Nae  thirsty  shafts  een  reached  the  earth 
Unstained  in  Scottish  blood." 


COQUETDALE  TO  WOOLER  349 

So  much  for  the  battle.  Of  all  that  came  of  it,  those  who 
do  not  remember  their  Henry  the  Fourth  of  history  may 
perhaps  recall  Shakespeare's  interpretation  of  this  critical 
period  of  his  troubled  reign,  and  how  he  makes  "the  post 
from  Wales  laden  with  heavy  news,"  to  wit,  the  first  victory 
of  Glyndwr's  army  at  Pilleth  arrive  at  the  same  time  as  this 
cheering  news  from  the  north.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  had 
arrived  four  months  earlier  ;  nor  did  Humbleton  fulfil  the 
satisfaction  it  promised  either  to  Henry  or  the  Percies  for 
quite  different  reasons.  To  the  latter,  the  prisoners  captured 
there  were  of  immense  ransom  value,  and,  in  any  case,  the 
king,  they  affirmed,  owed  them  much  money  on  their  Welsh 
expenditure.  As  a  further  grievance,  Henry  now  demanded 
that  these  Scottish  prisoners  should  be  delivered  into  his 
hands,  an  outrage  on  the  military  custom  of  the  period. 
The  indignant  Hotspur,  it  may  be  remembered,  went  south, 
and  had  such  a  stormy  interview  with  the  king  that  the  latter 
drew  his  sword  on  him,  whereat  Percy  replied,  "  Not  here,  but 
on  the  field  of  battle."  How  the  Percies  then  rose  against 
the  king,  released  their  prisqners  at  the  price  of  their  assist- 
ance, and  marched  to  the  fatal  field  of  Shrewsbury  where 
Hotspur  fell,  is  a  matter  of  common  historical  knowledge. 
The  last  seen  of  the  Northumbrian  hero  was  his  exhumed 
and  already  decomposing  corpse  propped  up  between  two 
millstones  in  Shrewsbury  market-place,  that  all  the  world 
might  know  that  this  dangerous  firebrand  of  the  north  was, 
in  truth,  dead,  and  that  even  his  name  could  be  used  to 
conjure  with  no  more. 

I  frankly  confess  to  finding  it  difficult  in  this  classic  land 
of  Border  story,  so  steeped  in  the  memories  of  recorded 
deeds,  so  bristling  even  yet  with  conspicuous  reminders  of 
them,  to  have  much  enthusiasm  to  spare  for  the  litter  of 
prehistoric  ages  which  lies  around  here  thick  enough.  The 
crest  of  Humbleton  itself  carries  the  traces  of  a  circular  camp. 
Just  behind  it,  on  a  jutting  ledge  commanding  a  narrow 
gorge,  are  the  singularly,  well-defined  walls  of  another 
elaborate  but  small  camp,  while  scattered  everywhere  about 


among  the  ferns,  heather,  and  gorse,  that  clothe  the  sides  of 
this  imposing  chain  of  hills,  are  the  traces  of  ramparts  or 
round  huts.  But  if  those  people  who  sought  refuge  here  had 
their  Hotspurs  and  Douglases,  we  shall  never  know  any- 
thing about  them.  They  were  probably  nothing  like  so  well 
worth  knowing,  and  their  interests  doubtless  as  limited  as 
the  stone  huts  that  sheltered  them,  and  the  entrenched  camps 
that  protected  their  stock  at  night  from  wild  beasts,  and 
themselves  from  enemies  in  time  of  stress.  The  ardent 
antiquary  looses  none  of  his  zeal  for  these,  though  the 
shadows  of  a  more  luminous  day  so  thickly  overlie  them. 
The  scattered  stone  heaps  and  the  broken  banks  suffer  no 
passing  eclipse  in  interest,  though  they  had  been  watered  by 
the  blood  of  a  hundred  mediaeval  heroes  with  whom  we  are 
by  comparison  on  terms  of  intimacy.  To  the  less  technical 
wanderer,  however,  the  elusive  phantom  of  prehistoric  man, 
lively  enough  where  it  holds  the  field,  for  instance,  as  in 
Wiltshire,  must  pale  before  the  realities  of  chivalry  that  here 
confront  one.  As  we  stand  on  Humbleton,  or,  better  still, 
on  the  loftier  Yavering  bell,  the  next  peak  but  one  to  the 
north-westward,  with  the  silent  heart  of  the  Cheviots  at  our 
back  and  the  whole  of  the  Eastern  March  spread  out  beneath 
our  feet,  we  may  be  forgiven  for  overlooking  the  fact  that  we 
are  standing  in  the  centre  of  a  well-defined  British  camp. 
An  excellent  local  guide-book  relates  that,  though  the  view 
from  Yavering  bell  is  a  renowned  one,  its  chief  interest  is  in 
its  camp.  There  is  nothing  to  quarrel  with  in  so  convention- 
ally correct  a  statement ;  but  I  cannot  imagine  any  wight 
with  a  soul  within  him,  thus  situated  for  the  first  time,  putting 
the  attractions  of  Yavering  bell  in  this  order  of  merit,  but  a 
quite  uncompromising  antiquary.  It  comes  back  to  me  on 
an  October  morning  of  rare  refulgence  unruffled  by  wind  or 
cloud.  Battlefields  of  National  or  Border  note  lay  all  about 
one,  and  how  many  scenes  of  unrecorded  strife  who  shall  say. 
Humbleton  was,  of  course,  close  at  hand,  and  if  the  Bendor 
stone,  squatting  as  it  was  then  in  the  centre  of  a  field  of 
swedes,  reminds  the  careless  rustic  as  he  hoes  his  way  around 


COQUETDALE  TO   WOOLER  351 

it  of  that  heady  fight,  a  second  stone,  not  far  from  the  foot  of 
Yavering  itself,  commemorates  another  defeat  of  the  hereditary 
foe  by  another  comparatively  small  force  of  archers  but  a 
dozen  years  later.  Flodden,  conspicuous  with  its  wooded 
shoulder  and  grassy  crest,  could  almost  be  shelled  from  here 
by  a  modern  gun,  and  between  us  and  it  lay  the  fat  meadows 
through  which  the  sullen  Till  now  winds  to  Millfield.  Far 
beyond  Flodden  another  scene  of  famous  conflict,  the  hill  of 
Halidon,  rises  bleak  and  high  above  the  mouth  of  Tweed, 
while  away  to  the  south  the  woods  are  visible  where  Ralph 
Percy  fell  at  Hedgeley  Moor. 

Castles  and  pele  towers  stood  thick  upon  the  landscape 
for  those  who  could  pick  them  out,  which  by  that  time  I  was 
happily  qualified  to  do.  Coupland  Castle,  in  which  an  old 
fortress  is  embedded,  once  owned  by  that  fortunate  John  de 
Coupland,  who  took  King  David  prisoner  at  Neville's  Cross, 
lays  just  below  on  the  banks  of  the  quick-flowing  Glen.  In 
the  eighteenth-century  mansion  of  Ewart,  standing  in  the 
foreground  with  its  flanking  woods  and  open  parklands, 
where  Glen  and  Till  unite,  is  another  'ancient  pele  tower. 
Here  the  St.  Paul  family  *  have  been  seated  for  two  centuries, 

*  Count  Horace  St.  Paul,  second  of  the  name  at  Ewart,  played  an  interesting 
part  in  the  world's  stage.  Having  killed  a  Mr.  Dalton  in  a  duel  at  a  moment 
when  the  practice  was  being  temporarily  frowned  upon  in  high  quarters,  he  had 
to  leave  both  the  army  and  England.  After  this  he  joined  the  Austrian  service, 
fought  through  the  Seven  Years'  War,  and  became  a  colonel  of  cavalry  and 
member  of  the  imperial  staff.  Francis  I.  created  him  a  count  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  and  he  contracted  a  lifelong  intimacy  with  Lord  Stormont,  British 
ambassador  at  Vienna,  which  resulted  in  his  becoming  secretary  to  the  embassy 
at  Paris  when  his  friend  was  transferred  there  in  1 772-6,  and  acting  for  a  time 
in  his  place.  After  serving  as  minister  to  Sweden  he  returned  to  Northumber- 
land and  settled  down  at  Ewart,  adding  to  the  house  and  laying  out  the  park  and 
grounds  on  the  model  of  a  demesne  in  Austria  familiar  to  him.  These  operations 
included  the  planting  of  the  woodlands  now  so  prominent  a  feature  in  the  Till 
valley.  This  same  Count  Horace,  too,  gathered  within  the  house  many  of  the 
valuable  pictures,  books,  and  other  treasures  that  it  now  contains.  He  raised 
and  commanded,  during  the  Napoleon  Wars,  the  Cheviot  Legion,  a  volunteer 
cavalry  corps  nine  hundred  strong,  which,  at  the  false  alarm  of  a  French  landing 
in  1804,  owing  to  some  heather  burning,  marched,  among  others  of  the  Border 
and  Scottish  forces,  to  the  coast.  Part  of  their  accoutrements  are  preserved  at 
Ewart.  Scott  in  the  Antiquary,  it  will  be  remembered,  gives  a  humorous  account 


352     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

distinguished  in  the  eighteenth  in  European  wars  and 
diplomacy.  Ford  Castle,  of  Flodden  fame,  stands  lifted  finely 
up  behind  the  Till,  six  miles  away ;  and  a  mile  beyond,  the 
abandoned  but  still  considerable  walls  of  Etal  almost  throw 
their  shadows  on  the  same  tortuous  and  noiseless  stream. 
Far  away,  just  a  grim  and  solitary  fragment  on  a  hill,  Duddo 
tower  was  plainly  visible.  Just  across  the  Till,  too,  beyond 
Ewart,  was  the  village  of  Doddington,  over  whose  stone 
bridge  tramped  Surrey's  hungry  army  on  their  march  to 
Flodden,  and  in  the  village,  dominating  the  stackyards  and 
sheds  of  an  ample  homestead,  is  another  sixteenth-century 
fortress  house,  its  roofless  walls  and  gables  distinctly  visible 
from  this  lofty  perch.  But  enough  for  the  moment  of  these 
tales  and  landmarks  of  blood.  Perhaps  the  very  peaceful 
nature  of  this  dreamy  autumn  landscape,  sprinkled  with 
flocks  and  herds,  and  giving  out  no  death  note  now,  but  the 
faint  rip-rap  that  strikes  betimes  the  death  knell  of  some 
still  unwary  partridge  or  wandering  hedgerow  pheasant,  by 
very  contrast  turns  one's  fancy  to  its  stormy  past.  But  I 
make  no  apologies.  The  wanderer  who  has  no  mind  for 
the  drum  and  trumpet  had  better  remain  with  Wordsworth 
in  the  Lake  country,  for  he  cannot  escape  their  echoes 
here,  go  where  he  will,  and  even  if  he  could  shut  his  ears  to 
them  it  would  be  to  miss  much  more  than  half  the  spirit 
of  the  land.  Yet  Paulinus — according  to  Bede — centuries 
before  all  this,  preached  his  mission  of  peace  and  goodwill 
beneath  the  shadow  of  Yavering  bell ;  for  the  kings  of 
Northumbria  seem  to  have  had  some  sort  of  palace  in  the 
village,  and  the  holy  man  is  said  to  have  spent  much  time 
with  Edwin  and  his  queen,  industriously  baptizing  the  natives 

of  this  invasion  scare.  Count  Horace  St.  Paul's  literary  remains  are  considerable, 
and  have  now  for  the  first  time  been  collated  by  Mr.  George  Grey  Buller  of 
Ewart,  son-in-law  of  the  late  Sir  Horace  St.  Paul  (Bart.),  who  left  no  male  heir. 
A  selection  of  these  in  three  volumes  will  shortly  see  the  light.  Two  volumes 
are  concerned  with  the  count's  diplomatic  career  at  a  critical  period  in  Europe, 
and  are  not  only  of  extreme  interest  in  themselves,  but  are  expected  to  throw  a 
fresh  light  on  more  than  one  international  episode.  The  third  volume,  to  be 
issued  by  the  Cambridge  University  Press,  contains  the  count's  personal  journal 
during  the  Seven  Years'  War. 


COQUETDALE  TO  WOOLER  353 

in  the  limpid  waters  of  the  Glen.  But  in  those  dim  days  the 
character  of  the  populace  was  doubtless  neither  more  nor 
less  quarrelsome  than  elsewhere.  It  was  a  good  part  of  a 
thousand  years  before  the  accident  of  situation  made  them 
specialize  in  the  art  of  attack  and  defence,  and  in  the  sub- 
sidiary craft  of  cutting  out,  rounding  up,  and  driving  other 
people's  cattle.  Yet  the  staunchest  of  Quakers  with  eyes  to 
see  and  heart  to  feel,  who  cared  nothing  for  the  animal  passions 
of  men,  whether  fighting  with  slings  on  prehistoric  ram- 
parts, or  in  burnished  armour  around  historic  fortresses,  could 
not  have  looked  out  that  day  from  Yavering  bell  without 
delight.  The  golden  fern  lay  in  great  splashes  upon  the  green 
and  solitary  steepes.  The  long  silvery  trail  of  the  Glen  was 
below,  as  it  came  issuing  from  the  heap  of  Cheviot  spurs,  that 
towards  Scotland  nourish  the  Bowmont  and  the  College 
burns,  which  merge  their  names  and  peaty  waters  in  the  first- 
named  stream.  Over  the  meeting,  too,  of  the  Glen  and  Till, 
and  the  Kyloe  range  to  the  eastward,  against  whose  whin- 
stone  ramparts  broad-acred  farms  laid  their  rougher  upland 
pastures,  the  North  Sea  gleamed  once  more. 

June  is  the  time  for  foregrounds,  for  bursting  leaves,  for 
lush  grass  before  the  ripening  seed  has  tarnished  its  colour- 
ing. June,  in  the  north,  at  any  rate,  for  the  song  of  birds, 
and  assuredly  for  the  May  fly  and  for  May  blossoms,  and 
most  of  the  good  things  which  poets  attribute  to  the  wrong 
month  ;  a  season  in  which  we  may  even  snatch  delusive 
gleams  of  youth.  But  autumn  for  the  hills,  for  wild  land- 
scapes, and,  above  all,  for  half-hours  on  summits  like  this. 
Since  that  October  day  a  year  ago  I  have  stood  there  again, 
or,  to  be  more  accurate,  on  its  neighbour  of  Akeld,  which  is 
almost  the  same  thing  in  the  only  June-like  day  of  the  most 
deplorable  June  within  memory.  I  have  nothing  to  add, 
unless  it  be  to  record  the  more  jocund  demeanour  and  varied 
music  of  hilltop  birds,  the  wheatears  springing  from  the 
half-grown  fern,  the  whinchats  hovering  with  joyful  chirrup 
about  the  topmost  frondes  of  the  bracken,  in  whose  safe 
depths  somewhere,  their  half-fledged  young  were  doubtless 
2  A 


354     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

scuttling,  or  even  some  belated  eggs  still  waiting  to  be 
hatched.  The  swollen  rills,  tumbling  down  the  sides  of 
Cheviot  on  this  occasion,  added  something  to  the  chorus,  and 
the  wandering  streams  of  the  low  country,  big  with  rains, 
shone  with  a  broader  track  beneath  the  unwonted  sun.  If 
there  was  joy  on  the  Cheviot  tops  that  June  morning, 
despondency  reigned  in  the  vale  below.  Here  and  there  a 
group  of  bondagers,  singling  some  precocious  field  of  swedes, 
could  be  descried,  but  the  tillage  land  of  all  this  country  and 
of  the  Merse  beyond  lay  almost  water-logged,  while  the 
season  fleeted  swiftly  by,  in  which  the  root  crop,  so  vital  to 
the  stock  farmer,  could  be  sown  to  any  advantage.  'The 
middle-aged  and  the  elderly  shook  their  heads,  and  made 
frequent  and  gloomy  reference  to  that  black  nightmare  of 
1879,  which  1907,  till  the  middle  of  July,  most  ominously 
resembled.  We  are  all  familiar  with  Scotch  broom.  But  to 
realize  the  full  splendour  of  its  bloom,  I  am  inclined  to  think 
one  must  see  it  in  June,  on  its  native  soil,  the  Scottish  Border- 
land, where  even  the  glow  of  the  gorse  pales  beside  it  A  long 
trail  of  gold  at  the  foot  of  the  hills  blazed  out  beyond  anything 
within  sight  on  this  occasion,  and  for  a  moment  puzzled  me 
till  I  realized  it  was  the  embankment  of  the  railroad  track 
heading  for  Kirknewton  that  made  so  dazzling  a  display. 

In  spite,  however,  of  that  one  glorious  June  day,  I  would 
rather  recall  the  Cheviots  in  the  kindly,  but  not  too  uniform, 
October  that  preceded  it.  Nor  least  of  its  pleasant  memories 
are  the  grayling  of  the  Glen  and  Till,  then  coming  into  the 
full  pride  of  condition,  and  rising  readily  to  the  fly.  There 
is  a  distinct  air  of  breeding  about  Thymallus  ;  he  justly  ranks 
with  the  trout  and  salmon  family  as  an  aristocrat,  though  he 
has  taken,  perhaps,  a  little  too  free  advantage  of  the  hospi- 
tality that  has  been  extended  to  him  of  late  in  some  select 
rivers.  I  am  inclined  to  think  he  has  even  lost  cast  just  a 
little  by  his  inconsiderate  fecundity  and  insufficient  considera- 
tion for  the  maxims  of  live-and-let-live  in  his  joint  occupation 
of  trout-streams  with  the  aborigines.  It  is  only  about  a 
dozen  years  since  he  was  introduced  to  the  Till  and  its 


COQUETDALE  TO  WOOLER  355 

tributaries,  and  the  trout-fishing  has  declined  greatly  since 
his  advent.  For  a  river,  particularly  in  these  days  of  drainage 
and  quick,  short  floods,  will  naturally  only  support  a  certain 
number  of  fish;  and,  to  judge  by  the  prodigious  stock  of 
grayling  here,  it  is  obvious  that  the  trout  must  have  been 
elbowed  out  considerably  to  make  room  for  them.  You 
would  never  imagine,  as  you  laid  the  two  side  by  side  on 
the  grass,  that  a  competition  between  them  would  result  in 
favour  of  the  tender,  graceful,  ladylike-looking  and  appar- 
ently toothless  fish.  For  the  trout  feels,  even  to  the  hand,  an 
altogether  more  combative  animal.  He  is  well  provided,  too, 
with  a  mouthful  of  sharp  teeth,  and  has  quite  a  truculent 
expression  compared  to  the  meek  face  of  his  rival.  A  trout, 
moreover,  can  devour  any  number  of  small  grayling,  but  you 
can  see  at  once  that  the  jaws  of  the  latter  save  him  from  any 
reproach  of  cannibalism.  He  can  fight  on  the  hook,  however, 
with  as  much  vigour  as  his  lustier-looking  neighbour,  an 
accomplishment  which  gives  him  his  rank  among  anglers. 
When  in  condition,  too,  he  is  as  toothsome  as  the  average, 
though  not  as  the  best  trout.  He  takes  the  fly  more  subtly, 
and  has  to  be  handled  when  hooked  more  gently  for  his 
tender  mouth.  He  can  make  a  fool,  too,  of  the  most  skilful 
angler  to  an  extent  rarely  equalled  by  the  more  downright 
trout,  with  all  his  fads  and  fancies.  He  is  not  really  as  shy 
as  the  other,  but  is  possessed,  one  can  only  suppose,  of  a 
greater  sense  of  humour.  For  there  are  days,  only  too  well 
known  to  the  grayling  fisherman,  when  he  will  be  rising  with 
apparent  avidity  in  every  direction  for  hours  together,  and 
absolutely  laugh  at  anything  put  over  hiny ;  nay,  worse,  for 
he  will  rise  short  at  your  line  with  a  prolonged  consistency 
that  no  trout  is  capable  of.  The  trout  will  have  his  little 
joke  with  us,  as  we  all  know,  for  a  reasonable  period,  but  he 
cannot  keep  it  up  all  day  with  the  grim  humour  of  his  bland- 
looking  rival.  I  spent  several  pleasant  October  days  by 
these  gently  purling  streams,  of  another  character  from  the 
Tynes,  and  at  that  season  greatly  attenuated  by  a  drought 
which  gave  full  scope  to  the  idiosyncracies  of  the  grayling. 


356     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

The  reader  possessed  of  Dr.  Johnson's  views  on  angling  will, 
I  hope,  forgive  me  for  recalling  as  an  illustration  two  par- 
ticular days,  which,  one  of  at  least,  he  will  doubtless,  though 
quite  wrongly,  regard  as  wasted.  On  the  first  I  worked  for 
hours  up-stream  with  such  measure  of  skill  and  industry  as  I 
could  command,  and  put  half  the  flies  in  my  stock,  either  in 
wet  or  dry  fashion,  over  the  countless  rises  with  an  almost 
blank  result.  The  next  day  but  one,  under  precisely  similar 
conditions  of  wind  and  water,  impelled  by  I  know  not  what 
to  such  an  elementary  and  apparently  absurd  proceeding,  I 
fished  a  wet  fly  down  the  shrunken,  pellucid  stream,  and  had 
to  stop  long  before  the  sun  had  touched  the  top  of  the 
Cheviots,  as  my  quite  capacious  creel  would  hold  no  more, 
so  greedy  and  confiding  had  my  previous  tormentors  proved. 
Yet  a  dozen  years  ago  the  people  of  these  parts  had  never 
even  seen  a  grayling  ! 

The  Till  is  unlike  any  other  Border  river — it  might  be 
own  sister  to  the  Hereford  Teme  or  Lugg,  winding  like  those 
prolific  streams  through  low  luxuriant  meadows,  between  red 
and  crumbly  banks.  No  wonder  the  grayling  like  it,  for 
these  other  rivers  are  among  their  few  ancient  and  indigenous 
haunts  before  artificial  hatching  and  stocking  began.  Like 
them,  it  has  its  brief  interludes  of  activity  upon  stony  bottoms, 
in  this  case  throwing  up  fine  gleams  of  red  and  white  and 
green  through  the  clear  swishing  waters.  Like  them,  it  as 
regularly  follows  these  periods  of  gentle  fretting  by  a  longer 
period  of  repose,  gliding  slowly  between  high  banks,  which, 
undermined  now  on  this  side  and  now  on  that  by  mountain 
floods,  are  for  ever  toppling  piece  by  piece  into  the  stream 
below.  But  the  Till,  from  the  time  it  ceases  to  be  the  Beamish 
above  Chillingham,  beneath  which  it  flows,  describes  con- 
tortions unequalled  by  any  river  known  to  me  in  England  or 
Wales,  and  after  it  gets  through  the  deep  pass  in  the  hills 
between  Chatton  and  Wooler,  and  meets  the  lusty  Wooler 
burn  from  the  Cheviots  in  the  levels  below  that  town,  it 
wriggles  in  quite  grotesque  fashion  down  the  flat  vale  past 
Doddington,  Ewart,  and  Millfield,  and  so  under  Flodden  Edge 


COQUETDALE  TO  WOOLER  357 

to  Ford  and  Etal.  Here  the  hills  begin  to  restrain  its  hitherto 
unchecked  meanderings,  and  for  the  rest  of  its  brief  career 
it  assumes  an  appearance  of  much  individual  beauty,  being 
overhung  in  places  by  steep  woodlands  till,  passing  under 
Twizell  bridge  and  beneath  the  ruinous  towers  of  Twizell 
Castle,  it  meets  the  Tweed.  It  is  at  this  moment,  we  may 
suppose,  that  Tweed  puts  its  famous  query  to  its  tributary, 
and  gets  so  severely  snubbed — 

"Said  Tweed  to  Till, 
'  What  gars  ye  rin  sae  still  ? ' 
Said  Till  to  Tweed, 
'Though  ye  rin  wi'  speed 
And  I  rin  slaw, 
Whar  ye  droon  ae  man, 
I  droon  twa.' " 


CHAPTER  XV 
THE  MUCKLE  CHEVIOT 

WOOLER,  as  I  have  already  remarked,  had  some  local 
notoriety  a  century  ago,  and  even  later,  as  a  health 
resort,  and  invalids  were  sent  there,  not  merely,  as  it  may  be 
remembered  was  Grace  Darling,  to  breathe  the  Cheviot  air, 
but  to  drink  the  milk  of  the  Cheviot  goats,  which  was 
regarded  as  beneficial.  Wooler's  little  season,  which  has  no 
longer  any  concern  with  goats'  milk  whey,  for  there  are  no 
goats,  nor  any  faith  in  them  perhaps,  was  over  before  I  got 
there,  so  I  secured  comfortable  quarters  in  a  sunny  little  old- 
fashioned,  ivy-clad  house  without  the  town.  Here  I  became 
the  sole  care  of  a  most  excellent  landlady  of  good  yeoman 
stock,  fine  traditions,  and  a  long  memory,  with  a  harmonious 
background  of  good  old  furniture  which  had  once  stood  in 
the  patriarchal  homestead  in  remote  and  palmy  days.  There 
was  also  a  venerable  dog,  who  attached  himself  to  me  with 
unswerving  devotion  from  the  first  moment.  When  not 
waiting  for  such  crumbs  as  might  fall  from  my  table  or 
extended  upon  my  hearth,  he  spent  the  hours  posted  at  the 
wicket-gate  of  the  garden,  which  looked  down  on  the  narrow 
road  to  the  station,  barking  furiously  at  every  living  thing 
which  passed  beneath.  This  I  learned  had  been  the  one  and 
innocent  hobby  of  his  long  life,  and  had  automatically  earned 
him  as  extensive  a  notoriety  and  nodding  acquaintance  as 
any  dog  in  Northumberland.  He  was,  in  truth,  an  amiable 
mono-maniac,  for  in  his  normal  and  social  hours,  extended  on 
the  rug,  he  did  not  mind  how  often  you  tumbled  over  him.  He 
was  an  Irishman  by  birth,  a  terrier  by  designation,  though 

358 


THE  MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  359 

of  no  blood  to  speak  of,  and,  had  he  been  human,  would 
no  doubt  have  gone  into  politics,  and  used  his  apparent 
truculency  with  effect  below  the  gangway  at  moments  of 
heat  and  stress. 

Of  course  I  had  made  up  my  mind  to  ascend  "  the 
muckle  Cheviot "  ever  since  I  had  first  seen  its  often  cloud- 
capped  head  against  the  horizon  from  the  distant  shores  of 
Embleton  Bay.     My  first  attempt,  somewhat  long  deferred, 
was  incontinently  baffled.     The  suggestion  of  a  friend  on  the 
Scottish  side  familiar  with  the  mountain,  and  of  more  than 
common  knowledge  of  Border  lore,  that  we  should  make  it 
together  was,  of  course,  entirely  welcome.     We  were  to  start 
from   his  house  near  Kelso,  and,  after  enjoying   the  view 
from  the  summit  of  Cheviot,  to  take  our  opposite  ways  home 
again.      The    late   October  morning    broke  beautifully  in 
brilliant  sunshine,  and  a  fresh  wind  seemed  to  forebode  an 
ideal  day  on  the  hills.     We  had  a  drive  of  some  eight  miles 
through    the    well-farmed    and    well-wooded     lowlands    of 
Roxburghshire  to  the  old  gipsy  village   of  Yetholm,  lying 
picturesquely  tucked  below  the  Cheviots.     I  was  pointed  out, 
by  the  way,  a  country  house  that  is  held  as  the  original  of 
Scott's  castle  of  Avenel.    Among  few  readers  of  the  novels, 
I  should  imagine,  do  the  Abbot  and  the  Monastery  rank  as 
prime  favourites.     But  the  mere  passing  glimpse  of  a  scene — 
in  itself  not  unromantic,  as  the  Cheviots  were  now  looming 
near — which  was  presumably  in  Scott's  mind  throughout  two 
books  was  a  good  deal,  sufficient,  at  any  rate,  to  inspire  me 
to  a  renewal  of  their  acquaintance  on  the  first  opportunity. 
Yetholm,  which  I   had  seen  before  in   the   first  bloom   of 
summer,  and  in   the  same  company,  walking,  however,  on 
that  occasion,  from  Kirknewton,  on  the  English  side,  over  a 
pass  through  this  edge  of  the  Cheviots,  was  for  generations 
the  headquarters  of  the  Faas  or  gipsies  of  the  Border,  and 
there  are  still,  I  believe,  a  good  many  in  residence.    The 
place  is  full  of  stories  and  traditions  in  connection  with  them. 
Twenty  years  ago  Esther,  the  last  Romany  queen,  was  buried 
here  with  much  ceremony.    Numbers  of  gipsy  kings  and 


360     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

queens  lie  in  the  old  kirkyard,  amid  the  remains  of  Faas, 
Baillies,  Blyths,  Gordons,  and  Browns,  and  other  well-known 
Romany  stocks. 

From  Kirk  Yetholm  we  followed  the  Bowmont  river  into 
the  heart  of  the  hills  by  a  road  which  served  the  three  or 
four  homesteads  which  were  the  only  habitations  in  the 
valley.  The  stream,  now  little  more  than  a  lusty  burn,  and 
of  amber  hue  from  a  recent  twelve-hours'  rain,  raced  below 
or  beside  us  through  sheep  pastures,  or  open  moorland,  or 
glades  of  birch  and  fern.  The  sun  had  vanished,  but  behind 
clouds  of  no  very  threatening  import.  Moreover,  a  cold 
north-east  breeze  was  blowing,  which,  if  undesirable  in  a 
dogcart,  was  no  drawback  to  a  mountain  walk  in  October, 
and  augured  at  least  a  dry  one.  Our  valley  continued  along 
the  Border  line  between  Scotland  and  England,  which  many 
will  perhaps  be  surprised  to  hear  runs  for  some  twenty  miles 
south-east  by  south.  It  is  roughly  marked  here  by  the 
summit  of  the  hills,  which  rose  steep  and  wild  above  our  left 
shoulder  to  an  average  altitude  of  nearly  two  thousand  feet. 
In  due  course  our  mountain  road  abruptly  terminated  at  a 
lonely  farmhouse,  beneath  which  the  Bowmont,  now  a  trifling 
burn,  plunged  in  rocky  pools.  This  was  the  Ultima  Thule 
of  the  yale,  with  nothing  beyond  it  but  mountain  wastes,  so 
far  as  we  are  here  concerned.  Leaving  the  trap  to  await  my 
companion's  return  from  an  expedition  that  I,  at  any  rate, 
had  looked  forward  to  with  more  than  common  pleasure,  we 
breasted  the  long  slope  of  the  Scottish  side  of  the  Cheviots. 
We  may  have  perhaps  been  walking  for  an  hour,  and  had 
just  reached  the  watershed  ridge,  about  halfway  to  the  top 
of  the  mountain,  before  we  felt  any  particular  anxiety  as 
to  the  prospect  ahead  of  us.  It  was  evident  enough  that 
there  were  storms  blowing  about,  but  of  the  blustering  sort 
that  seemed  almost  a  guarantee  against  the  steady  rain  that 
could  alone  defeat  our  object,  or  seriously  interfere  with  the 
enjoyment  of  it. 

I  do  not  think,  however,  it  was  more  than  ten  minutes 
from  the  moment  we  first  began  to  entertain  faint  doubts  as 


THE  MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  361 

to  our  immediate  future  before  I,  for  my  part,  was  wonder- 
ing whether  in  the  whole  of  my  life  I  had  ever  been  quite 
so  miserable,  and,  with  a  reasonably  full  experience  of  wet 
and  cold  in  many  countries,  I  am  still  inclined  to  think  I 
never  had  been.  For  without  any  warning  to  speak  of,  while 
exposed  on  the  very  comb  of  the  watershed  above  the  Hen- 
hole,  we  were  struck  in  the  face  by  an  icy  blizzard  of  fine, 
wetting  snow  driving  parallel  with  the  ground,  and  blotting 
out  the  whole  world  but  a  few  yards  of  heather  around  us. 
When  it  opened  betimes  and  showed  a  blurred  vision  of  the 
wild  valley  of  the  College  burn  some  hundreds  of  feet  below 
winding  down  the  English  side,  there  was  but  poor  consolation 
in  the  quarter  from  which  it  blew.  In  the  light  apparel  that  a 
dry  and  balmy  month  had  encouraged  with  somewhat  careless 
confidence,  one  was  not  only  soaked  to  the  skin  almost 
immediately,  but  by  the  continual  drive  of  this  wintry  snow- 
laden  blast  chilled  to  the  bone.  There  was  not  even  a  low 
bank  or  a  peat  hag  as  a  partial  shelter.  We  had  to  take  our 
punishment  standing  on  the  actual  skyline  between  Scotland 
and  England. 

It  was  in  the  silence  of  despair  that  we  ate  our  sand- 
wiches, and  not  as  fancy  had  fondly  painted,  sitting  snug  and 
dry  with  our  backs  against  the  cairn  of  the  Big  Cheviot, 
looking  out  over  most  of  the  noble  county  of  Northumberland. 
Thus  we  stood,  wet,  chilled,  and  miserable.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  done,  and  nothing  to  be  said,  even  had  we  felt 
loquacious.  What  little  there  was  occasionally  to  be  seen  in 
the  wind's  watery  eye  was  wholly  formidable  and  uncom- 
promising. People  in  the  world  below  could,  no  doubt,  have 
given  us  a  forecast;  but  up  here  none  was  possible.  We 
could  not  even  lessen  the  discomfort  by  walking  forward,  as 
under  the  circumstances  it  would  have  been  futile,  and  at  that 
particular  spot  especially  so.  Yet  to  abandon  our  scheme 
precipitately  seemed  a  little  craven,  particularly  as  the  top  of 
Cheviot  lay  almost  on  my  line  for  Wooler,  should  the  skies 
clear.  The  person  who  at  that  moment,  no  doubt  from  his 
incidentical  association  with  our  enterprise,  occurred  to  me 


I 


362     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

as  the  most  to  be  envied  of  all  men  was  my  friend's  groom, 
sitting  in  snug  comfort,  no  doubt,  before  the  kitchen  fire  of 
the  farmhouse  we  had  so  lately  and  light-heartedly  aban- 
doned.    At  length  I,  for  my  part,  standing  thus  helpless  and 
inactive,  could  endure  the  combination  of  cold  and  wet  no 
longer,  though  I  think  the  instinct  of  surrender  to  untoward 
circumstances  was  mutual.     A  passing  difficulty,  suggested 
rather  by  the  curtain  of  gloom  and  fine  driving  snow  and 
sleet  which  obscured  the  really  sombre  scene,  was  the  fact  that 
I  was  a  stranger  to  this  particular  waste  of  the  Cheviots. 
My  friend  kindly  pressed  me   to  return  with   him ;  but  a 
sixteen-mile  drive,  chilled   and  wet  to  the   skin,  seemed  a 
much  more  risky  alternative  than  facing  the  storm-obscured 
wilderness    alone.      This,   after   all,  was    geographically    a 
simple  matter ;   for  we  were  standing   on  the  ridge  which 
overhangs  a  somewhat  famous  gorge  known  as  the  Henhole, 
a  gloomy  chasm,  which  in  local  legend  has  been  the  scene 
of  some  fearsome  doings.      Down   it,  however,  plunge  the 
infant  streams  of   College  burn  which   thenceforth   pursue 
their  way  along  the  deep  glen  that  far  beneath  us  opened 
and  shut  in  the  storm  to  Kirknewton.     My  escape,  then,  if 
under  the  circumstances   laborious,   was,   at  least,  secured, 
should  all  the   powers  of  such  storm  and  darkness  as  late 
autumn  is  capable  of  combine  against  me.     So   my  com- 
panion departed  down  the  long  slope  towards  Scotland  with 
the  storm  happily  in  his  back,  while  I  descended  in  its  teeth, 
with  such  speed  as   I  could  make,  the  steep  sides  of  the 
mountain  to   the  rushy  mosses   through  which   the   infant 
waters  of  the  College  burn  twisted  on  their  stony  bed.     I 
was  thankful  to  have  some  whisky  left  in  my  flask  to  mix 
with  them  when  I  reached  the  bottom,Jfor,  to  be  candid,  I  felt 
unaccountably  shaky  on  the  legs,  and  queer  in  the  head,  and 
it  was  not  the  precise  moment  when  such   sensations  are 
altogether  comfortable.     I  was  also  unreasonably  annoyed  at 
being  compelled  to  admit  them,  for  this  futile  reluctance  of 
middle  age  to  accept  the  inevitable  is  a  common  human  frailty. 
Memory  flew  back  twenty  years  to  a  ridge,  in  all  essentials 


THE  MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  363 

the  counterpart  of  this  one,  on  the  Slieve  Bloom  mountains 
in  the  Queen's  county.  There,  in  this  very  month,  under 
precisely  similar  conditions,  if  lashing  sleet  may  be  sub- 
stituted for  driving  snow,  and  two  guns  and  a  brace  of 
whining  setters  superadded,  a  lamented  friend,  long,  alas ! 
fallen  a  victim  to  his  uncompromising  resistance  to  this  same 
inevitable,  and  myself,  took  our  stand-up  lunch.  I  remembered, 
with  a  pang  of  sorrow  and  envy,  how  we  laughed  and  made 
merry  over  our  dismal  plight,  and  felt  that  I  could  not  have 
even  simulated  a  laugh  above  the  Henhole  for  the  whole 
county  of  Northumberland.  Altitude  in  Great  Britain  seems 
to  mark  a  difference  in  temperature  under  certain  conditions 
altogether  disproportionate  to  its  modest  measurement ; 
above  all  when  vicious  storms  from  cold  quarters  are  flying 
about.  A  real  foretaste  of  winter  often  strikes  the  mountain- 
tops  with  a  ferocity  unknown  but  to  a  few  stray  shepherds, 
and  in  this  island,  where  the  thermometer  practically  never 
touches  zero,  several  storms  every  winter  pass  pver  its  moor 
and  mountain  heights  that  would  entirely  overcome  a  con- 
siderable proportion  of  ordinarily  if  sound  humanity,  if  exposed 
to  them  for  an  hour  or  two.  But  ordinary  mortals  never  are 
seriously  entrapped  in  these  wintry  blizzards.  Nor  do  I  think 
they  often  realize  what  English  weather  can  achieve  on  occa- 
sions at  two  thousand  feet.  The  huntsman  of  a  mountain-pack 
in  Cumberland,  renowned  even  there  for  his  endurance,  and 
well  known  to  me,  was  returning  one  February  afternoon,  in 
1902,  from  hunting  above  Patterdale.  He  had  killed  his  fox 
after  a  long  run,  and,  with  two  terriers,  was  traversing  the 
High  Street  range,  or,  to  be  precise,  Riggindale  top  in  the 
direction  of  Patterdale,  with  a  furious  blizzard  raging  full  in 
his  face.  The  terriers  after  a  time  gave  out,  and  their 
master,  taking  one  under  each  arm,  struggled  forward  till 
he  became  no  longer  equal  to  the  exertion,  and  had  to  leave 
one  to  the  fate  which  speedily  overtook  it.  Determined  to 
save  the  other,  he  pushed  on  till  it  became  merely  a  question 
of  saving  himself,  which  he  had  no  little  difficulty  in  doing. 
I  met  him  soon  afterwards,  and  he  described  the  affair  as  the 


364     THE  ROMANCE  OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

narrowest  shave  of  his  life.  A  friend  who  saw  him  on  his 
return  told  me  his  face  was  blistered  and  swollen  to  about 
twice  its  size,  and  he  was  laid  up,  I  think,  for  some  days. 
What  chance  would  the  average  denizen  of  civilization, 
capable  of  a  reasonable  day's  shooting,  or  a  couple  of  rounds 
of  golf,  have  with  a  storm  that  could  thus  treat  a  man  of 
iron,  to  whom  forty  miles  over  rough  ground  was  nothing, 
and  who,  in  the  local  hyperbole,  "  could  walk  from  Shap  to 
Helvellyn  blindfold  in  the  middle  of  the  night "  ?  * 

I  had  not  been  long  in  the  valley  before  the  storm  greatly 
modified,  and  through  a  grey  waving  veil  of  light-driven  snow, 
I  could  look  far  up  at  the  ridge  of  our  hasty  and  reluctant 
parting,  now  capped  with  white,  while  beneath  it  a  rather 
gruesome-looking  shadowy  gorge,  that  marked  the  famous 
Henhole,  vaguely  shaped  itself.  It  was  a  fine  and  solitary 
scene  from  down  here  in  the  deep  glen,  and  none  the  less  so 
for  the  sensation  that  I  had  dropped  into  it  so  unwillingly 
and  fortuitously  as  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land.  The  flanks 
of  the  big  Cheviot  slowly  revealed  themselves  upon  one  side 
as  the  air  cleared,  while  on  the  other,  those  of  a  mountain 
named  the  Schol  rose  with  equal  abruptness.  The  glen  was 
here  but  a  furlong  or  so  wide,  and,  with  the  grim  lofty  white- 
capped  barrier  that  seemed  to  close  up  its  head,  made  a  really 
weird  and  effective  picture  behind  the  flickering  veil  of  snow. 
I  could  now  see  down  the  valley  to  its  first  bend,  but  there 
was  no  sign  of  those  enclosures  which  always  herald  the 
approach  to  the  uppermost  mountain  homestead.  The  silence 
to  which  the  unseasonable  storm  and  unwonted  darkness  had 
reduced  every  bird  and  beast  that  haunts  the  hills,  added  to 
the  sombreness  of  the  scene — induced  a  sensation  of  creepi- 
ness,  a  pleasurable  indefinable  sense  of  awe  that  most  of  us, 

*  Since  this  incident,  set  down  from  memory  only,  was  put  in  type  I  thought 
it  well  to  refer  to  the  principals  in  it  for  confirmation.  The  facts  are  entirely 
accurate,  except  that  the  first  terrier  slipped  from  the  numbed  arm  of  the  huntsman, 
and  he  durst  not  stoop  to  pick  it  up  lest  he  should  be  unable  to  raise  himself  again. 
Its  body  was  found  a  few  days  after  close  to  the  spot  where  it  was  dropped.  The 
other  terrier  was  carried  home  in  safety. 


THE   MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  865 

perhaps,  have  felt  on  occasions  in  our  nobler  British  wilds. 
For  the  enjoyment  of  this  peculiar  form  of  exaltation  solitude 
is  indispensable.  To  me,  at  any  rate,  it  is  impossible  in  com- 
pany, nor  again  can  I  feel  it  in  the  wildest  prairies  or 
remotest  backwoods,  nor  even  among  snow  mountains. 
Perhaps  the  scale  of  their  solitude,  however  uplifting,  is  too 
immeasurable  and  crude,  and  lacks  those  qualities  which 
suggest  mystery  and  uncanniness.  The  latter  is  possibly 
stimulated  by  the  prodigious  contrast  to  a  bustling  world  one 
always  feels  here  to  be  so  close  at  hand.  I  should  have 
enjoyed  the  situation  very  much  more  if  the  water  had  not 
been  running  down  my  back,  and  I  could  have  even  put  up 
cheerfully  with  that  but  for  an  untoward  sensation  that  made 
me  unduly  resent  it.  But  after  I  had  followed  the  burn  down 
for  a  mile  or  so  over  bright  quaking  mosses,  or  beds  of  rushes, 
ferns  and  heather,  or  the  stony  litter  of  floods,  normal 
vitality,  at  any  rate,  if  not  normal  comfort,  returned.  The 
last  of  the  storm  drifted  up  towards  the  Henhole,  and  a  little 
later  the  sun  burst  out  with  as  much  splendour  as  an  October 
sun  was  capable  of.  It  was  vexatious  to  think  that  if  that 
common  object  on  the  hills,  a  stone  dyke,  had  been  in  our 
way,  all  this  would  have  been  saved,  and  we  should  have  been 
now  mounting  the  Big  Cheviot  with  comparatively  dry  skins 
and  glad  hearts,  and  the  certainty  of  a  glorious  view.  The 
first  outpost  of  civilization  seemed  a  long  time  in  coming, 
and  its  garrison,  who  quite  looked  their  part,  must  have  been 
surprised,  though,  being  Northumbrians,  they  did  not  show  it, 
at  the  apparition  of  a  bedraggled  stranger  emerging  upon 
them  from  nowhere  out  of  the  storm.  I  here  learnt  that 
Kirknewton  station  was  five  miles  off,  and  that  there  was 
a  train  passing  to  Wooler  some  time  in  the  afternoon.  This 
was  vague  but  not  disheartening,  for  I  did  not  feel  like  a 
further  twelve-mile  walk. 

There  was  a  farm  track  now  along  the  burn  side.  The 
sun  lit  up  the  lower  fells  that  rose  to  my  right  and  left, 
touched  the  carpet  of  brown  bracken  that  was  spread  lavishly 
over  their  verdant  slopes,  and  glowed  on  the  ruddy  crags  that 


366     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

broke  out  about  the  summit  of  these  shapely  little  mountains 
of  fifteen  hundred  feet  or  so.  A  wood  of  stunted  oak  straggled 
up  the  side  of  one  of  them,  which  I  remembered  being  pointed 
out  to  me  in  July  as  the  special  care  of  that  noted  North- 
umbrian sailor,  Admiral  Collingwood.  The  cultivation  of 
oak  trees  was  in  the  mind  of  most  patriotic  mariners  in 
those  days,  and  the  Admiral  had  some  designs  on  the  lower 
Cheviots  as  furnishing  ship  timber.  He  little  thought  that 
the  coal  and  iron  of  his  own  county  would  build  such  sea- 
going monsters  as  he  had  never  dreamed  of.  Following  the 
gradually  waxing  and  always  lively  streams  of  the  College 
down  its  narrow  vale,  sprinkled,  by  this  time,  with  occasional 
cottages  and  little  groves  of  larch  or  alder,  I  struck  at  length 
the  hard  high  road,  and  in  a  very  few  minutes  was  renewing 
a  former  acquaintance  with  the  station-master  at  Kirk- 
newton.  This  modest  building  at  the  first  glance  seemed 
to  my  anxious  eyes  to  wear  the  ominous  and  familiar  calm 
that  broods  over  a  wayside  station  after  it  has  recovered  from 
the  excitement  of  the  morning  or  afternoon  train,  so  it  was 
good  hearing  that  the  latter  was  not  due  for  half  an  hour. 
The  storm  which  played  such  havoc  with  us  had  left  no 
particular  impression  on  either  the  chief  or  his  porter  at  Kirk- 
newton,  which  was  somehow  disappointing,  though,  looking 
back  at  the  Cheviots,  which  make  from  here  a  fine  display  at 
any  time,  the  glittering  white  caps  of  the  higher  hills  in  the 
far  background  beneath  the  drooping  sun  showed  with  bril- 
liant effect  above  the  bright  verdure  that  waved  about  the 
nearer  and  lower  summits.  I  was  moderately  dry  by  now, 
or,  at  any  rate,  felt  so,  which  was  something,  but  was  thankful 
enough  in  due  course  to  be  greeted  by  my  Irish  friend's 
familiar  transports  of  rage  at  the  wicket,  soon  changed,  how- 
ever, for  the  most  effusive  of  welcomes.  But  he  got  no 
tit-bits  at  supper  that  night,  nor  did  I,  for  I  went  supperless 
to  bed,  in  the  face  of  my  good  landlady's  eloquent  protests. 
I  do  not  know  whether  science  has  yet  provided  a  four- 
syllabled  term  for  a  chill  on  the  liver.  Be  that  as  it  may,  I 
now  understood,  assisted  by  the  light  of  a  previous  and  not 


THE  MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  367 

very  remote  experience  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  humili- 
ating sense  of  dizziness  in  the  face  of  the  snowstorm  after 
parting  with  my  companion,  and  descending  into  the  stygian 
gloom  of  the  abyss  whence  issued  the  College  burn. 

It  was  a  great  deal  better  for  general  purposes,  at  any 
rate,  than  a  bout  of  rheumatism,  or  even  a  prolonged  cold  in 
the  head,  and  in  a  couple  of  days  I  was  quite  ready  for 
another  attack  on  the  "muckle  Cheviot,"  though  it  would 
have  this  time  to  be  achieved  unsupported  by  a  companion. 
But  the  route  from  Wooler,  I  need  hardly  say,  approached 
the  mountain  by  a  different  channel,  the  distance  to  its  foot 
being  some  seven  miles.  As  the  College  burn  flows  eastward 
from  the  northern  base  of  the  mountain,  so  flows  the  Wooler 
water  from  its  southern  base,  and  forms  the  usual  route 
thither  from  the  English  side.  An  ordinary  road  runs  from 
Wooler  to  Middleton,  a  hamlet  two  miles  distant,  where  you 
leave  civilization,  and  another  wild  valley,  after  the  nature  of 
that  of  the  College,  leads  you  by  many  windings,  nor  merely 
to  its  uppermost  but,  in  this  case,  to  its  only  homestead,  that 
of  Langleeford. 

Middleton  Hall  is  a  small  and  pleasantly  situated  country 
house,  of  no  particular  antiquity,  perched  high  among  woods, 
above  the  Wooler  water,  and  immediately  confronting  the 
Cheviot  wilderness.  It  was  once  part  of  the  Derwentwater 
property,  and  it  will  be  remembered  that  the  hapless  Earl 
and  Forster  occupied  Wooler,  and  proclaimed  King  James  in 
the  market-place.  In  Bowes'  survey  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
two  pele  towers  stood  here,  respectively  occupied  by  two 
brothers  bearing  the  eminently  Scottish  name  of  Rutherford. 
As  you  are  dropping  down  into  the  valley  beyond  Middleton, 
the  hills  through  which  your  path  lies  group  themselves 
finely  in  ascending  ridges  to  the  two  monarchs  of  the  range, 
Cheviot  and  Hedgehope — the  latter  a  fine  conical  peak  with 
a  cairn  on  its  point — which,  side  by  side,  fill  the  background 
with  much  distinction. 

I  think  this  particular  mountain  valley  is  one  of  the  most 
engaging  of  its  kind  I  ever  traversed.  Making  every  allowance 


368     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

for  the  opposite  conditions,  personal  and  climatic,  under 
which  I  traversed  each  of  them,  its  quality  differs  from  that 
of  the  College,  though  both  tap  the  same  wild  heart  of 
the  same  mountain.  There  was  nothing  austere  or  sombre 
about  this,  under  the  bright  sunshine  which  flooded  it,  though 
innocent  for  many  miles  of  mankind  or  his  works.  Its 
narrow  floor  was  mostly  carpeted  with  fine  green  sward, 
hidden  anon,  however,  under  great  patches  of  now  russet 
bracken.  The  gorse  and  heather  had  lost  their  bloom,  the 
moorland  flowers  had  vanished,  for  November  was  close  at 
hand,  but  the  sweet  rain-freshened  turf  matted  brightly 
around  the  grey  boulders,  which  were  strewn  about  it  or 
pushed  their  heads  above  the  fern.  The  wheatears  and  the 
other  smaller  migrants  of  kindred  tastes  and  habits  had  left  for 
lands  remote,  and  the  curlews  had  abandoned  the  hill  for  the 
sandy  flats  of  Lindesferne.  But  the  peewits  wheeled  above 
with  tireless  throats  and  drubbing  wings.  The  stream,  never 
a  stone's-throw  distant,  stimulated  but  not  swollen  by  late 
storms,  glistened  in  stony  shallows  or  tumbled  in  amber 
pools,  which  held  by  now  many  a  spawning  sea  trout  and 
salmon.  But  these  things  were,  after  all,  but  the  common 
attributes  of  all  moorland  valleys.  What  gave  such  peculiar 
charm  to  this  one  were  the  natural  groves  of  ancient  alders 
and  silvery  birch,  and  gnarled,  moss-grown  indigenous  oak, 
through  which  both  the  grassy  track  and  stream  from  time  to 
time  wound  their  way.  No  plantations  bristling  in  formal 
squares  were  these,  but  the  native  products  of  the  old  wild 
waste — Druidic-looking  shades  pierced  by  shafts  of  flickering 
sunshine,  and  lit  here  and  there  by  the  white  gleam  of  a  rapid. 
There  was  a  rugged  flavour  here,  too,  about  the  mountain 
skyline.  The  fantastic  crags  of  Langley,  like  the  wreck  of 
a  great  Border  fortress,  looked  finely  down  on  us  from  the 
edge  of  a  thousand  feet  of  sheep  sward.  Hedgehope,  nearly 
as  high  again  above  one,  with  its  cone-shaped  and  rocky 
summit,  rose  just  beyond,  looking  across  to  the  Big 
Cheviot,  one  might  fancy,  in  some  contempt  for  its  lumber- 
ing formless  proportions  and  flat,  undistinguished  top. 


THE   MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  369 

Where  the  two  mountains  meet,  and  amid  groves  of  un- 
expected wood,  a  rustic  bridge  and  tumbling  stream  at  its 
very  threshold,  lay  the  romantic  little  homestead  of  Langlee- 
ford,  a  spot  unsurpassed  in  the  Cheviots  for  charm  of  site 
and  environment.  It  has  traditions,  too,  worth  cherishing,  for 
here  came  Walter  Scott,  as  a  young,  light-hearted  student,  in 
company  with  an  uncle,  and  found  domicile  for  several  weeks 
in  this  very  house.  The  older  man  was  apparently  pursuing 
the  mountain  air  and  goats'  milk  cure ;  but  the  two  seemed 
to  have  spent  their  time  in  shooting  grouse  and  catching 
trout,  and  Scott,  at  least,  enjoyed  prodigiously  this  experi- 
ment of  the  simple  life. 

This  was  in  the  autumn  of  1791,  and,  writing  from  here 
to  William  Clerk  in  Edinburgh,  Scott  says,  "I  am  snugly 
settled  here  in  a  farmer's  house,  about  six  miles  from  Wooler, 
in  the  very  centre  of  the  Cheviot  hills,  in  one  of  the  wildest 
and  most  romantic  situations  which  your  imagination  ever 
suggested  ;  '  and  what  the  deuce  are  you  about  there  ? '  me- 
thinks  I  hear  you  say,  '  Why,  sir,  of  all  things  in  the  world, 
drinking  goats'  milk  whey ! '  Not  that  I  stand  in  need  of  it ; 
but  my  uncle,  having  a  slight  cold  and  being  a  little  tired  of 
home,  asked  me  last  Sunday  if  I  would  go  with  him  to 
Wooler,  and  next  morning's  sun  beheld  us  on  our  journey 
through  a  pass  in  the  Cheviots,  upon  the  backs  of  two  special 
nags,  and  the  man  Thomas  behind  with  a  portmanteau  and 
two  fishing-rods  fastened  across  his  back  in  the  style  of  a 
St.  Andrew's  cross." 

The  writer  goes  on  to  say  that  the  Wooler  accommodation 
was  so  indifferent  that  they  made  interest  to  get  quarters  at 
Langleeford,  with  which  they  are  delighted ;  he  himself 
particularly,  as  they  are  among  places  renowned  for  the  feats 
of  former  days.  "  Each  hill  is  crowned  with  a  camp,  tower,  or 
cairn,  and  in  no  situation  could  you  be  near  more  fields  of 
battle :  Flodden,  Otterburn,  Chevy  Chase,  Ford,  Chillingham, 
Coupland,  and  many  another  scene  of  blood  are  within  a 
forenoon's  ride."  He  then  out-Herods  even  the  average 
fisherman  by  telling  his  friends  that  he  pulls  trout,  half  a 
2  B 


370     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

yard  long,  out  of  this  brook,  where  I  fear  ten  inches  was 
always  somewhat  of  a  triumph,  and  how  all  day  they  shoot 
muirfowl,  fish,  and  ride.  He  drinks  the  whey  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  a  pretty  dairymaid  brings  it  to  his  bedside  at  six 
every  morning.  They  dine  and  sup  upon  fish  struggling 
from  the  stream,  and  the  best  of  mountain  mutton,  fowl,  and 
milk  cheese.  He  does  not  mention  the  grouse  on  the  table, 
so  perhaps  they  were  indifferent  shots,  and,  as  in  the  case  of 
General  Wolfe,  when  quartered  in  the  Highlands  half  a 
century  earlier,  found  "  more  exercise  than  entertainment "  in 
in  the  sport. 

"So  much  simplicity,"  Scott  continues,  "resides  among 
these  hills,  that  a  pen  which  could  write  was  not  to  be  found 
about  the  house,  though  the  latter  belongs  to  a  considerable 
farmer,  till  I  shot  the  crow  with  whose  quill  I  write  this 
epistle." 

What  could  one  demand  more  in  the  way  of  association 
of  a  spot  that  would  tempt  one  to  undue  dalliance,  even 
without  any  trace  of  it.  But  clouds  were  beginning  to  pass 
across  the  sun,  and  I  did  not  want  to  be  again  defeated. 
The  blooming  but  remote  successor  of  Sir  Walter's  dairy- 
maid advised  me  to  continue  up  the  burn  for  a  mile  to  their 
shepherd's  cottage  before  beginning  to  climb  the  long,  sloping 
breast  of  Cheviot  So  I  picked  my  way  along  a  footpath  that 
twisted  about  among  more  alders  and  birches  till  I  emerged 
at  the  aforesaid  dwelling,  upon  the  edge  of  the  uprising  waste. 
I  need  not  linger  over  the  ascent  of  the  remaining  seven- 
teen hundred  feet  or  so,  which  is  nowhere  even  precipitous, 
much  less  perilous,  for  a  pony  could  readily  be  ridden  with 
slight  deviations  to  the  summit  De  Foe  in  1728  achieved 
what  to  him  seemed  a  great  adventure  in  this  fashion,  and 
has  left  a  description  quite  characteristic  of  the  man  of  his 
day  unused  to  a  mountain  country.  He  took  a  guide  with 
him,  and  five  or  six  country  boys,  the  sort  of  outfit  with 
which  a  modern  starts  on  a  trip  of  exploration  in  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  De  Foe  tell  us  he  rode  up  the  hill  "till  its 
height  began  to  look  frightful,  and  I  own  I  wished  myself 


THE  MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  371 

down  again."  He  and  his  friend  were  anxious  to  alight, 
but  the  guide  objected.  "  The  young  fellows  then  took  our 
headstalls,  and  we  rode  higher,  till  at  length  our  hearts 
failed  us  all  together,  and  we  resolved  to  alight,  nor  could 
our  guide  prevail  or  persuade  us  otherwise.  So  we  walked 
it  on  our  own  feet  with  labour  enough,  and  sometimes  began 
to  talk  of  going  no  further."  They  then  became  seriously 
uneasy  about  going  forward,  as  they  had  a  notion  that  on 
reaching  the  top  they  would  be  on  a  sharp  pinnacle  and 
in  danger  of  toppling  over  a  precipice  on  the  other  side. 
Finally  they  sat  down,  and  refused  to  move  another  yard 
for  all  the  guides  and  country  boys  in  Northumberland. 
"  We  were  made  ashamed  of  these  fears,"  continues  De  Foe, 
naively,  "  when  to  our  amazement  we  saw  a  clergyman  and 
another  gentleman,  with  two  ladies,  all  on  horseback,  and 
looked  upon  one  another  with  a  smile  to  think  how  frightened 
we  had  been."  As  De  Foe  ascended  from  Langleeford  his 
tremors  are  entertaining.  And  it  must  be  remembered  that 
he  had  proved  his  valour  by  wielding  a  scythe  against  Marl- 
borough's  regulars  on  the  bloody  field  of  Sedgemoor.  But 
that  timorous  attitude  towards  a  mountain  was  quite  usual 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  though  few  are  honest  enough  to 
turn  the  laugh  against  themselves,  like  De  Foe.  As  a  rule, 
they  allow  the  blood-curdling  accounts  of  their  innocent 
achievements  to  stand  unqualified,  and  leave  their  hardier 
successors,  if  by  chance  they  have  been  their  readers,  to 
wonder  where  these  imaginative  ancients  could  have  expected 
to  go  to  when  they  died  ! 

There  is,  in  truth,  nothing  perilous  or  precipitous  about 
the  ascent  of  Cheviot.  Three-quarters  of  an  hour  of  steep 
walking,  mainly  through  moor  grass,  cloven  with  mossy  rills, 
and  finishing  up  with  a  few  hundred  yards  of  heather  and 
occasional  rock,  placed  me  on  the  summit,  which  the  cairn 
may  be  fairly  supposed  to  represent.  But  the  summit  of 
Cheviot  is  unique,  I  think,  among  British  mountains,  being 
practically  flat,  and  covering  at  least  fifty  acres,  the  greater 
part  of  which  is  quaking  bog.  I  had  heard  something  of  this, 


372     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

but  had  still  vaguely  pictured  myself  looking  thence  with  one 
eye  into  Scotland  and  the  other  into  England,  since  this  vast 
heap  of  a  hill  squats  right  upon  the  Border  line,  towering 
above  everything  between  the  Highlands  and  the  Lake 
district,  and  between  the  Irish  and  the  North  Seas.  Arrived 
at  the  cairn,  however,  I  found  there  was  practically  nothing 
of  Scotland,  of  whose  middle  and  western  march  I  was  anxious 
to  get  a  general  survey,  to  be  descried  from  that  side.  The 
sun  had  vanished,  and  clouds  were  chasing  about  in  threaten- 
ing fashion,  so  I  left  the  English  outlook,  already  in  a  sense 
familiar,  for  later  enjoyment  if  the  fates  willed,  and  traversed 
by  a  sinuous  route,  and  no  small  exercise  of  agility,  this 
curiously 'placed  half-mile  of  sloppy  bog  to  the  Scottish  edge. 
The  English  side  had  been  fairly  clear.  But  from  this  one, 
instead  of  the  expansive  and  inspiring  outlook  over  or  into 
the  counties  of  Roxburgh,  Selkirk,  Peebles,  Lanark,  and 
Dumfries,  with  their  numerous  hill  ranges  I  had  hoped  for, 
there  was  nothing  but  a  blurred  chaos  of  black-and-white 
clouds,  and  a  few  neighbouring  and  familiar  hills  dim  in  the 
foreground,  and  no  prospect  of  a  view.  No  little  mortified, 
I  proceeded  to  jump  and  twist  my  way  back  again,  getting 
part  of  a  leg  in  occasionally,  and  practising  manoeuvres  that 
recalled  many  old  days  of  snipe  shooting  on  the  bog  of 
Allan.  But  before  reaching  the  cairn  again  I  was  enveloped 
in  a  dense  cloud,  accompanied  by  smart  rain.  This,  however, 
was  altogether  a  different  class  of  storm  from  the  vicious 
north-easter  of  the  week  before,  whose  traces  were  still 
clinging  in  white  patches  to  the  northern  slopes  of  Hedgehope, 
and,  moreover,  a  ruinous  stone  shielding  near  the  cairn 
provided  a  quite  luxurious  shelter.  So  I  sat  on  its  leeward 
side  and  lit  a  pipe,  and,  feeling  confident  that  the  storm  was 
a  passing  one,  rather  enjoyed  the  sensation  of  having  it  all  to 
myself,  which  was  obviously  the  case  with  this  one.  There 
is  a  curious  fascination  in  being  alone  on  a  high  mountain- 
top  with  the  world  blotted  out  and  clouds  whirling  past  one's 
very  ears,  though  it  may  sometimes  be  inconvenient.  Four 
years  agone,  onjthe  top  of  the  Bannau  Brycheiniog,  the  Brecon 


THE  MUCKLE  CHEVIOT  373 

Beacons,  another  mountain  of  nearly  three  thousand  feet,  of 
whose  very  existence  the  average  Englishman  knows  nothing, 
though  a  noble  and  shapely  one,  I  was  imprisoned  by  a 
driving  mist  in  a  dozen  square  yards  of  visible  earth  for 
a  couple  of  hours ;  for  this  was  a  peak  precipitous  on  one 
side  as  well  as  unfamiliar.  There  were  no  such  perilous 
features  in  this  hog-backed  old  monster,  but  I  did  not  want 
the  world  shut  out  for  too  long,  as  days  are  short  in  late 
October,  and  I  was  anxious  to  see  Northumberland  once 
again  spread  out  before  me  in  this  its  widest  canvas,  and  to 
take  leave  of  a  large  part,  at  any  rate,  of  the  hills  and  valleys 
and  sea-coast  I  had  roamed  in  for  so  many  months.  My  pipe 
was  scarcely  out  before  the  storm  sped  away  towards  the 
North  Sea,  and  the  whole  country,  from  the  Lammermuirs  to 
rugged  Simonside  above  Rothbury,  was  shining  in  the  sun- 
light, and  the  wide  North  Sea,  with  its  familiar  coast  from 
Berwick  to  Bamburgh  and  from  Bamburgh  to  Warkworth, 
lay  blue  against  the  horizon.  Once  more,  however,  I  traversed 
the  weary  bog  to  the  Scottish  edge,  though  again  to  small 
purpose,  for  Scotland  seemed  to  be  enjoying  another  kind  of 
weather  altogether  from  her  neighbour,  though  happily  keep- 
ing most  of  it  to  herself.  Half  a  loaf,  at  any  rate,  had  been 
better  than  no  bread,  so  I  set  my  face  for  home  and  Wooler, 
this  time  keeping  high  up  along  the  rough  hillsides,  and  only 
descending  to  the  valley  again  a  mile  or  so  below  Langleeford. 
The  drooping  sun  was  now  shining  radiantly  on  the  green 
slopes  of  Hedgehope  and  Langlee  crags,  and  lighting  up  the 
ruddy  rocks  that  crowned  their  summits,  while  the  sheep, 
following  their  immemorial  evening  habit,  were  feeding  up 
the  hillsides,  their  clean  fleeces  spangling  the  verdant  heights 
like  clusters  of  mushrooms. 

Night  had  fallen  on  the  snuggest  and,  to  my  thinking,  the 
most  delightful  mountain  valley  in  Northumberland,  as  I 
passed  out  of  it  up  the  slope  on  which  the  lights  of  Middleton 
Hall  glimmered  through  its  dark  belt  of  trees.  I  do  not  know 
whether  my  canine  friend  had  prolonged  his  all-day  vigil  in 
my  honour,  or  whether  the  moon,  which  was  now  riding  high, 


374     THE   ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

was  providing  a  further  excuse  for  his  energies.  But  half  an 
hour  later  I  heard  him  hard  at  it  as  I  came  up  the  dark  lane, 
and  was  met  for  the  moment  with  a  reception  that  any  night- 
prowler  might  reasonably  expect  from  so  alert  a  sentinel. 
However,  he  had  his  reward,  for  that  night  I  did  not  by  any 
means  go  supperless  to  bed, 


CHAPTER  XVI 
FLODDEN    FIELD 

11  Green  Flodden,  on  thy  bloodstained  brow 
Descend  no  rain,  nor  vernal  dew  ; 
But  still,  thou  charnel  of  the  dead, 
May  whitening  bones  thy  surface  strew. 

"  The  rancour  of  a  thousand  years 
Are  in  my  breast ;  again  I  burn 
To  see  the  banner'd  pomp  of  war 'return, 
And  mark  beneath  the  moon  the  silver  light  of  spears." 

NOT  many  modern  Scots,  I  fancy,  could  work  themselves 
up  to  such  a  heat  of  old  Border  fervour  as  did  that 
gifted  son  of  Teviotdale,  John  Leyden,  a  century  ago  in  his 
really  fine  and  well-known  stanzas.  Nearly  all  Englishmen 
of  our  time,  and  probably  a  majority  of  Scotsmen,  hold  Flodden 
and  Bannockburn  as  the  two  events  of  a  great  incompleted 
rubber,  an  admirable  foundation  in  the  matter  of  sentiment 
for  a  partnership  between  two  haughty  nations,  proud  in 
arms.  For  general  purposes,  this  prevailing  notion,  usually, 
no  doubt,  a  robust  survival  of  the  schoolroom  period,  is  quite 
sound  enough.  The  long  intervening  tale  of  strife  and 
blood,  though  of  sufficient  interest  to  those  who  concern 
themselves  with  such  things,  leave  one,  after  all,  with  much 
the  same  conclusions,  namely,  that  honours  were  divided. 
There  were  plenty  of  Anglo-Scottish  battles  on  practically 
the  scale  of  these  two  immortal  ones  ;  some  as  bloody  or 
more  so,  some  as  decisive  and  individually  calamitous.  But 
Bannockburn  and  Flodden  remain  somehow  in  the  mind 
when  the  others  have  grown  hazy,  and  thereby  prove,  as  it 

375 


376     THE  ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

were,  their  right  to  a  pre-eminence  implanted  perhaps  by  a 
nursery  governess,  and  illustrated  with  tin  swords  upon  the 
lawn.  So  far  as  a  great  triumph  is  ennobled  by  the  cause  in 
which  it  is  won,  Bannockburn  stands  immeasurably  above 
Flodden,  for  in  a  sense  it  was  the  final  vindication  of  Scottish 
independence ;  while  at  Flodden,  though  the  victors  morally 
deserved  their  victory,  and  the  vanquished  their  defeat,  it  was 
provoked  by  the  latter  upon  no  really  worthy  issue,  nor  was 
it  decisive  of  anything  between  the  countries.  How  much 
more  then  must  the  battle  itself  have  impressed  itself  upon 
contemporary  imagination  to  have  left  such  a  resounding 
echo !  Bannockburn  gave  a  hero  to  history  and  romance  with 
whom  every  Anglo-Saxon  child  in  the  world  is  familiar. 
Flodden  produced  no  popular  hero  for  posterity,  though  much 
more  actual  heroism  was  probably  shown  there.  Dramatically, 
the  hero  of  Flodden  is  the  slain  leader  of  the  beaten  side, 
though  he  had  the  odds  with  him.  But  outside  Scotland  the 
ordinary  mortal  would  not  like,  I  fancy,  to  be  asked  off-hand 
who  lead  the  respective  armies,  and  would  be  thankful  if 
some  scraps  of  "Marmion"  absorbed  perchance  at  a  tender  age 
came  to  his  aid.  Coercion  of  the  youthful  British  Philistine 
to  inspiring  verse  can,  I  presume,  do  no  possible  harm,  and 
some  of  the  seed  may  fall  on  fertile  ground,  take  root  and 
prosper.  The  dismal  task,  moreover,  seems  occasionally  to  be 
rewarded  by  mental  revelations  that  from  a  teacher's  stand- 
point would  easily  redeem  a  wasted  hour.  A  friend  of  mine, 
not  very  long  ago,  was  giving  a  lesson  in  English  literature 
at  a  well-known  public  school  to  one  of  those  forms  where 
stodgy  youths  who  have  long  outlived  all  intellectual  ambition 
are  apt  to  vegetate  in  cheerful  apathy,  till  their  waxing 
stature  or  downy  chins  made  the  situation  a  reproach  unto 
themselves  and  impossible  to  their  preceptors.  The  subject 
was  a  pertinent  one  to  this  chapter,  a  fact  which  emboldens 
me  to  the  digression — none  other,  in  fact,  than  Marmion.  On 
the  suggestion  being  put  to  one  of  the  most  invincible 
dullards  that  he  should  give  his  view  as  to  what  Scott  meant 
by  "The  battle's  deadly  swell,"  he  replied  with  reasonable 


FLODDEN   FIELD  377 

celerity  and  sublime  innocence  of  any  humorpus  intent  that 
he  supposed  it  was  Lord  Marmion. 

Dr.  Moss,  of  Shrewsbury,  1  where  Milton  is  apparently 
the  time-honoured  subject  for  written  impositions,  related 
at  a  public  dinner  recently  an  incident  equally  as  good  in  its 
way.  It  appears  that  the  day  after  the  late  Lord  Tennyson's 
death,  a  Shrewsbury  master,  while  carving  at  dinner,  remarked 
on  the  melancholy  event  to  some  senior  boys  sitting  near 
him,  when  a  youth  of  neither  scholarly  nor  industrious  habit, 
somewhere  down  the  table,  looking  up  with  a  truculent  and 
vindictive  expression,  exclaimed  fervently,  "  I  wish  it  had  been 
that  beastly  old  Milton."  Marmion  has  assuredly  done  much 
towards  perpetuating  the  memory  of  Flodden,  but  Scott,  in 
selecting  the  subject,  was  only  reflecting  the  genuine  historic 
and  dramatic  interest  of  the  battle  among  all  Scotsmen  of 
his  bent  of  mind.  Disaster  that  it  was ;  useless  and  futile  in 
object  and  results  compared  to  Bruce's  victory  ;  I  could 
venture  the  statement,  under  correction  but  without  any 
serious  fear  of  reproof  in  any  responsible  quarter,  that  it  has 
fascinated  Scottish  students  more  than  the  other — the  greatest 
triumph  of  their  history.  Bannockburn  is  in  fact  nothing  like 
so  interesting  as  a  fight.  It  was  a  straight-out  crushing 
defeat,  and  was  also  a  general  stampede ;  moreover,  it  was  so 
long  ago  that  we  do  not  know  the  actors  nearly  so  well  as  we 
do  those  of  Flodden,  which,  in  addition  to  official  documents, 
is  celebrated  by  several  almost  contemporary  ballads,  in  which 
great  numbers  of  individuals  are  particularized.  Flodden,  too, 
was  a  crushing  victory,  but  in  great  part  was  fought  out  to 
the  death,  and  it  is  distinguished,  moreover,  by  a  good  deal  of 
strategy,  provocative  of  much  discussion,  as  well  as  some 
rather  unaccountable  conduct  that  puzzles  historians  of  all 
degrees,  and  will  probably  continue  to  puzzle  them. 

I  have  called  the  reader's  attention  so  often  in  these  pages 
to  the  green  summit  of  Flodden  Hill,  that  he  will  probably 
resent  being  told  that  the  battle  was  not  fought  there  at  all, 
but  on  the  breast  of  Branxton  Ridge,  a  mile  to  the  northward. 
But  we  shall  come  to  that  presently,  and  it  will  be  necessary  in 


378     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

the  mean  time  to  say  a  word  as  to  what  led  to  the  quarrel,  and 
incidentally  to  justify  the  statement  that  it  was  a  futile  fight, 
fought  for  comparatively  trifling  ends. 

In  this  summer  of  1513,  Henry  the  Eighth,  with  most  of 
his  army  available  for  the  purpose,  was  fighting  the  French, 
and  in]August  besieging  Terouenne.  A  truce  had  been  made 
with  Scotland.  But  Henry,  mistrusting  his  brother-in-law, 
James  the.  Fourth,  had  left  the  Earl  of  Surrey  to  watch  his 
kingdom,  for  there  was  some  ill-feeling  on  the  part,  at  least, 
of  the  brilliant  but  somewhat  heady  James,  who  was  cherish- 
ing several  minor  grievances.  The  dowry  of  his  queen, 
Margaret,  for  one  thing,  had  not  been  fully  paid.  Andrew 
Barton  again,  whose  name,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  carved 
on  a  rock  beneath  Embleton  sands,  had  been  killed  by  the 
Howards  as  a  pirate  on  the  high  seas,  and  the  said  Barton, 
though,  like  all  spirited  mariners  of  those  days,  addicted  to 
irregular  buccaneering,  was  one  of  the  most  promising  com- 
manders James  had  for  the  navy  he  was  building.  Then 
there  had  been  a  Border  disturbance,  and  one  of  the 
Northumbrian  Herons,  known  as  the  Bastard,  had  assisted  in 
the  killing  of  Sir  Robert  Kerr.  There  were  complications, 
for  though  !his  associates  were  caught  by  the  Scots,  Heron 
escaped.  As  for  the  English  king,  though  willing  enough  to 
bring  him  to  justice,  he  honestly  could  not  catch  him,  so 
handed  over  his  quite  innocent  half-brother  of  Ford  Castle 
instead,  to  be  detained  at  Edinburgh.  This  should  have 
satisfied  every  one  except  the  hapless  Sir  William  Heron,  of 
Ford,  particularly  as  this  Bastard  brother  was  reported  as 
dead  in  outlawry,  but  it  did  not  satisfy  the  Scottish  king. 
Lastly,  the  French,  his  ancient  allies,  for  obvious  reasons 
were  goading  James  to  cross  the  Border,  and  that  not  merely 
through  agents  at  his  court,  for  the  French  queen  herself, 
though  no  longer  a  young  woman,  appealed  to  his  somewhat 
romantic  temperament  by  sending  him  a  ring  and  begging 
him,  in  the  language  of  an  obsolete  chivalry,  as  her  true  knight 
to  strike  a  blow  on  English  soil. 

James  was  forty-two ;  he  had  reigned  nearly  twenty  years, 


FLODDEN  FIELD  379 

and  though  not  in  all  ways  wise  was  valiant  and  well 
meaning,  and  possessed  withal.of  sufficient  magnetism  to  unite 
the  varied  races  and  factions  of  his  kingdom  in  attachment, 
at  any  rate,  to  himself  if  not  to  one  another.  He,  at  least, 
was  spoiling  for  a  fight,  if  nobody  else  was.  But  when  at 
length  he  summoned  his  people  to  his  standard,  an  army, 
quoted  by  both  Scottish  and  English  authorities  at  the 
formidable  total  of  one  hundred  thousand  men,  mustered  at 
Edinburgh.  Nobody  seems  quite  to  believe  this  estimate. 
But  it  is  generally  held  that  at  least  sixty  thousand  Scots 
crossed  the  Tweed  with  their  king  at  Norham,  on  August  22, 
including  the  flower  of  their  nobility. 

"  That  roll  of  names 
Who  followed  thee,  unhappy  James, 
Crawford,  Glcncairn,  Montrose,  Argyle, 
Ross,  Bothwell,  Forbes,  Lennox,  Lyle, 
Foredoomed  to  Flodden's  carnage  t  pile." 

After  a  short  week's  siege,  Norham  fell,  while  all  the 
neighbouring  towers  and  castles,  Wark,  Duddo,  Etal,  Coup- 
land,  and  probably  Chillingham,  and,  above  all,  Ford,  sur- 
rendered at  once.  James  took  up  his  quarters  at  the  latter 
fortress,  where  the  wife  of  his  prisoner,  William  Heron,  was 
chatelaine.  A  familiar  legend  represents  the  king  as  a 
victim  to  the  charms  of  this  lady,  who  used  them  to  hold 
him  in  dalliance  while  she  communicated  his  plans  and 
resources  to  Surrey.  If  this  were  true,  which  it  is  not, 
James  assuredly  treated  his  mistress  with  slight  gallantry, 
for,  after  accepting  her  enforced  hospitality,  he  certainly 
gutted  her  house.  The  great  square  tower  is  still  standing, 
near  the  later  mansion,  and  the  room  where  the  king  slept 
is  still  cherished.  Ford  is  in  truth  a  noble  seat,  standing 
among  woods  above  the  Till,  with  the  most  ornate  village 
in  Northumberland — though  its  near  neighbour  of  Etal  is 
more  truly  picturesque — stretching  along  the  ridge  from  its 
gates.  Since  I  commenced  this  book  it  has  been  sold  by  its 
owners,  the  Waterford  family.  The  late  Lady  Waterford  was 
famous  for  her  artistic  gifts,  and  the  large  village  schoolroom 


380     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

is  profusely  adorned  with  subject-pictures  that  occupied 
her  many  years,  in  which  the  form  and  features  of  past  and 
present  villagers  are  conspicuous.  I  have  heard  it  said  by 
ill-natured  outsiders  that  this  and  the  kindred  favours  of  a 
long  and  beneficent  ngimftusM  sensibly  enlarged  the  heads 
of  the  natives,  and  induced  among  them  a  conviction  that 
they  are  not  quite  as  other  bucolics.  Beyond  the  Till  rose 
the  long  green  slope  of  Flodden,  at  that  day  no  doubt  as 
bare  as  the  Cheviots  towering  high  behind  it,  and  to  which 
it  is  linked  by  a  chain  of  very  similar  hills,  rising  five  hundred 
feet  or  so  above  the  Vale  of  TilL  Now,  however,  these  low 
Cheviot  spurs  are  crested  in  part  with  wood,  and  their  slopes 
fenced  into  large  fields  of  grain,  roots,  and  pasture.  While 
James  lay  at  Ford  he  had  fixed  his  camp  and  posted  his 
army  on  the  long  ridge  of  Flodden  immediately  in  sight,  and 
two  miles  away.  Here,  well  provided  with  tents,  and,  accord- 
ing to  English  accounts,  with  lashings  of  food  and  drink, 
they  might  have  enjoyed  themselves,  but  for  the  deplorable 
weather  which  distinguished  the  first  part  of  September.  A 
fortnight  of  plunder,  too,  is  said  to  have  greatly  reduced 
the  Scottish  army  in  numbers,  Highlanders  and  Borderers 
particularly,  being  always  as  eager  in  safely  securing  their 
spoil  as  dexterous  in  acquiring  it. 

Surrey  in  the  mean  time  had  not  been  idle,  for  news  of  the 
siege  of  Norham  had  stirred  him  to  instant  action.  He  was 
a  veteran  now,  both  in  years  and  war.  "An  auld  crooked 
carle,"  as  James  called  him,  but  with  the  mental  vigour,  at 
any  rate,  of  youth.  The  Scottish  king  had  a  grudge  against 
him  for  the  killing  of  Barton  by  his  sons,  while  he,  on  his 
part,  had  another  against  James  for  keeping  him  away  from 
the  French  war.  Surrey  was  ably  backed  by  Henry's 
Spanish  queen,  Katherine  of  Arragon,  who  even  worked  on 
the  banners  with  her  own  hands,  and  her  letters  to  her  hus- 
band at  the  time  are  very  interesting.  Urgent  was  the  call 
to  arms  that  went  out  through  the  northern  counties,  and  it 
was  nobly  met,  though  James  had  declared,  as  a  predecessor 
had  done  with  equal  lack  of  prescience  before  the  rout  of 


FLODDEN  FIELD  381 

Neville's  Cross  during  the  Crecy  campaign,  that  there  was 
nothing  left  in  England  but  "  millers  and  mass  priests."  The 
Stanleys  hurried  up  their  people  from  Lancashire  and  Cheshire, 
including  some  of  the  best  archers  in  England.  The  bishopric 
of  Durham  turned  out  in  force  under  Sir  William  Bulmer 
and  Sir  Brian  Tunstall,  "the  stainless  knight,"  bearing  the 
banner  of  St  Cuthbert,  and  burning  to  revenge  the  capture 
of  the  episcopal  fortress  of  Norham.  From  Yorkshire  and 
the  Craven  country  came  strong  companies  of  bowmen  and 
billmen.  Dacre,  tough  Border  fighter  and  warden  of  the  West 
March,  led  on  the  footmen  of  the  Cumbrian  mountains,  and 
a  thousand  mounted  raiders  from  the  Irthing  valley  and  the 
wild  moors  around  Alston  and  Bewcastle,  while  Northumber- 
land, of  course,  turned  out  in  force,  both  from  the  "  shires " 
and  the  raiding  valleys. 

Newcastle  was  the  chief  rendezvous,  and  from  thence  on 
August  30  Surrey  marched  to  Alnwick,  where  his  force  was 
completed  to  about  28,000  men  ;  and  thence,  moving  north- 
ward, he  encamped  on  Wooler  haugh,  a  mile  or  so  short  of 
the  town,  on  September  6.  From  here,  six  miles  away,  the 
English  could  see  the  crest  and  slopes  of  Flodden  covered 
with  the  Scottish  host.  It  had  rained  for  a  week,  and  still 
continued  to  rain.  Provisions  had  almost  run  out,  and  for 
drink  they  had  only  flood  water.  Surrey  had  already  sent  a 
herald  to  James,  reproaching  him  for  breaking  the  truce,  and 
enjoining  him  at  the  same  time  to  remain  and  give  him 
battle.  There  was  some  further  passing  of  heralds  and  quaint 
passages  between  king  and  earl.  The  latter's  son,  the 
admiral,  who,  with  his  younger  brother,  Edmund  Howard, 
held  commands,  sent  a  message  on  his  own  account  admitting 
the  death  of  Barton,  and  offering  single  combat  on  that 
account  to  any  man  in  the  Scottish  army. 

The  upshot  of  all  this  was  that  James  felt  it  a  point  of 
honour  to  wait  for  Surrey.  His  army,  gathered  from  every 
part  of  Scotland — Highlanders,  Islanders,  Borderers,  Low- 
landers,  under  their  respective  chiefs — had  melted  away  to 
probably  40,000,  but  the  flower  of  the  Scottish  chivalry  were 


382     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

still  round  him.  In  the  presence  of  the  "auld  enemy"  they, 
no  doubt,  were  ready  to  fight.  But  they  at  least  had  no 
pressing  quarrel  to  stimulate  them,  nor  any  casus  belli  but 
their  king's  wish.*  The  wiser  heads  urged  James  to  recross 
the  Tweed,  whose  broad  current  makes  a  fine  gleam  in  the 
foreground  of  the  glorious  prospect  that  spreads  northward,  and 
indeed  upon  every  side  from  Flodden  Edge.  Possibly  by  the 
sixteenth  century  there  was  a  glimmering  among  the  more 
enlightened  even  of  soldiers,  that  a  huge  sacrifice  of  valuable 
lives,  such  as  there  promised  here  to  be  for  no  purpose,  was 
undesirable.  Something  was  said  among  the  Scottish  nobles 
as  to  the  inequality  of  the  sacrifice  from  the  social  point  of 
view,  under  the  belief  that  the  bulk  of  such  men  they  would 
wish  to  cross  swords  with  were  serving  Henry  on  the  Con- 
tinent ;  a  legitimate  objection,  perhaps,  at  that  period,  in  view 
of  a  quite  purposeless  fight.  But  James  himself  cherished  his 
grievances,  and  yet  more  a  chivalrous  feeling  that  he  had 
accepted  Surrey's  challenge,  and,  in  consequence,  he  snubbed 
his  friends  so  severely  that  the  wily  old  Archibald  Douglas 
(Bell-the-Cat),  leaving  his  sons  to  die  upon  the  field,  went 
home.  Moreover,  he  had  his  Frenchmen  at  his  elbow,  who, 
from  first  to  last,  were  bellicose,  having  much  to  gain  and 
nothing  to  lose  by  a  battle.  Surrey  and  his  Englishmen,  on 
the  other  hand,  had  a  strong  casus  belli,  and  nothing  much  left 
to  eat,  so  there  was  no  time  wasted.  On  the  6th  they  struck 
camp,  crossed  the  Till  by  the  stone  bridge  at  Doddington, 
where  Wooler  anglers  now  put  up  their  rods  and  mount  their 
casts,  and  so  by  the  old  fortalice  to  the  high  ground  at  Bar- 
moor,  all  out  of  sight  of  the  Scots.  Here  Surrey  camped  for 
the  night.  The  "  sullen  Till,"  swollen  with  rains  and  most  of 
its  fords  submerged,  now  lay  between  the  armies,  skirting  the 

*  Richard  Guy,  the  Yorkshire  schoolmaster,  who  wrote  an  alliterative  ballad  of 
Flodden,  supplies  the  Scottish  nobles  with  characteristic  reasons  for  invading 
England. 

"  Our  startling  nags  in  stable  spar'd, 
Are  waxen  wild  with  too  much  rest ; 
Our  staves,  which  were  both  tall  and  straight, 
Wax  crooked,  and  are  cast  each  where." 


FLODDEN  FIELD  383 

base  of  Flodden  Hill,  a  mile  from  the  Scottish  camp,  and 
then  disappearing  from  their  sight  in  a  narrow,  curving  valley, 
on  its  brief  journey  towards  the  Tweed. 

The  Scots  now  imagined  that  Surrey  had  marched  off 
towards  Berwick,  with  a  view  of  raiding  the  Merse,  and  were 
astonished  the  following  afternoon  to  see  the  English 
approaching  from  the  northward  on  their  own  side  of  the  Till, 
two  miles  away,  and  blocking  their  road  to  Scotland.  Surrey 
had,  in  fact,  made  his  masterly  but  risky  move.  The  Scottish 
artillery,  pushed  forward  to  defend  the  river  about  Ford,  made 
any  crossing  there  out  of  the  question.  So  Surrey,  hidden 
all  the  time  from  their  sight,  divided  his  army,  and  sent  his 
guns  and  vanguard  on  a  long  march  to  Twizell  bridge,  that 
same  high,  single  arch  which  to-day  spans  the  Till  near  its 
junction  with  the  Tweed,  at  least  seven  miles  distant,  there 
to  cross  and  return  up  the  left  bank.  He  himself,  timing 
his  movements  with  precision,  led  the  rest  of  his  force 
through  a  ford,  probably  then  about  breast  deep,  close  to 
Crookham,  and,  unseen  by  the  enemy,  but  two  miles 
distant  The  junction  was  effected  near  Branxton  village, 
where  the  Scots,  to  their  amazement,  first  beheld  them 
about  four  in  the  afternoon.  A  short  mile  due  north  of 
Flodden  hill,  and  slightly  lower,  is  the  parallel  ridge  of  Branx- 
ton, which  slopes  steadily  down  for  about  one  thousand 
yards,  with  broad  breast  to  the  small  village,  where  a  burn 
now  meanders  through  narrow  meadows  to  the  Till  by  Crook- 
ham,  a  mile  and  a  half  distant.  At  the  time  of  the  battle 
this  was  a  marsh,  practically  impassable.  Surrey,  crossing  at 
Sandyford,  could  slip  up  to  Branxton  inside  this  marsh,  or 
else  cross  it  at  its  narrow  mouth  near  the  Till,  unless  the 
Scots  and  their  guns  were  thrust  thus  forward,  which,  in  spite 
of  a  story  anent  a  Scottish  gunner,  does  not  seem  likely,  as  it 
was  thought  the  English  were  bound  for  Berwick.  But  Surrey's 
place  of  crossing,  often  thought  to  be  Milford,  is  contentious. 
At  any  rate,  he  turned  up  on  the  right  side  at  the  right 
moment,  so  did  his  sons  with  the  artillery,  after  a  fifteen-mile 
march,  whether  they  crossed  the  marsh  by  an  old  causeway, 


384     THE  ROMANCE  OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

or  went  round  the  head  of  it,  against  which  procedure  the  lie 
of  the  ground  suggests  no  reason  whatever ;  but  this  is 
another  little  matter  of  contention.  The  English  were 
fasting  and  wet,  and  presumably  weary.  It  is  extraordinary 
how  they  fought.  The  Scots  were  wet  too,  but  well  fed  and 
fresh.  There  is  a  splendid  passage  in  "  Marmion  "  describing 
the  pageant,  as  seen  from  Flodden  Hill,  of  Surrey's  vanguard 
crossing  Twizell  bridge.  This  is  six  miles  distant  from  the 
former,  and  out  of  sight,  and  is  purely  poetic  licence.  When 
James  discovered  the  English  on  the  hither  side,  or  about  to 
be,  of  Branxton  marsh,  with  obvious  designs  on  Branxton 
ridge,  all  his  advantages  of  elevation  were  at  once  threatened. 
With  what  must  have  been  extraordinary  celerity,  he  set  fire 
to  his  camp  refuse  on  Flodden,  and  under  its  smoke,  carried 
by  a  south  wind,  marched  his  army  to  the  further  ridge, 
which,  extending  for  a  mile  or  more,  faces  due  north,  and 
occupied  it  thus.  On  the  extreme  left  were  Lords  Home  and 
Huntley,  with  their  respective  following  of  Borderers  and 
Gordon  Highlanders.  Next  came  Crawford  and  Montrose, 
with  about  as  many  more  good  fighting  men,  and  many  lords 
and  gentlemen,  all  with  spears,  on  foot.  To  the  right  of 
these,  and  with  them  forming  what  may  be  called  and  proved 
the  main  battle,  was  the  king's  own  division,  a  small  force 
under  Bothwell  being  in  reserve  behind.  Lastly,  on  the 
extreme  right  stood  some  ten  thousand  Highlanders  and  men 
of  the  isles  under  Lennox  and  Argyle. 

A  thin  fringe  of  tall  beeches  and  other  trees  along  the 
middle  portion  of  the  ridge  now  marks  what  must  have 
been  the  centre  of  the  Scottish  army.  It  is  a  quiet  and 
sequestered  spot,  lying  back  from  all  main  roads.  But  from 
Branxton  ridge,  with  Flodden  Hill  a  mile  behind,  and  the 
Cheviots  rising  high  in  the  background,  a  beautiful  outlook 
unfolds  itself  to  the  northward.  It  is  the  more  suggestive, 
too,  as  the  last  that  a  great  company  of  the  flower  of 
Scotland's  chivalry  ever  had  of  their  native  land,  sullen  with 
clouds  though,  peradventure,  it  was  on  that  fatal  evening.  I 
have  stood  here,  however,  each  time  in  either  summer  or 


FLODDEN   FIELD  385 

autumn  sunshine,  when  women  were  singling  turnips  on  the 
broad  slope  down  which  King  James  led  that  impetuous  and 
fatal  charge,  or  hinds  were  leading  barley  on  Piper's  hill  below, 
an  inconsequential  knoll  enough  but  a  landmark  in  Flodden 
literature.  Hence  you  may  see  Tweed  shining  in  broad 
current  from  the  grassy  mounds  above  its  banks,  which  alone 
remain  of  Wark,  once  the  most  famous  of  all  Border  castles, 
to  hide  itself  two  miles  below,  among  the  woods  and  steeps 
of  the  Coldstream  and  Norham  reaches.  Of  the  Till  nothing 
from  hence  can  actually  be  seen,  though  its  course  can  be 
traced  towards  Twizell  and  the  Tweed,  by  the  hilltops  under 
which  it  urges  its  now  quickening  and  more  contracted 
streams,  while  the  Merse  in  its  heavy  patchwork  of  field  and 
woodland  spreads  away  to  the  long  wild  line  of  the  Lammer- 
muirs,  behind  which  lies  the  heart  and  capital  of  Scotland. 
Surrey's  force,  in  the  mean  time,  was  extended  in  position 
along  the  northern  foot  of  the  hill.  It  was  a  bold  move, 
initiated  by  a  bolder  manoeuvre.  For  he  had  thrown  his  army, 
with  empty  stomachs,  at  the  close  of  a  long  day's  march, 
between  the  flower  of  a  nation  renowned  in  arms  superior 
in  numbers,  fresh  with  well-filled  stomachs,  and  their  own 
country.  They  had  the  hill,  too,  and  they  had  the  wind. 
Had  the  sun  been  shining,  which  it  almost  certainly  was  not, 
it  would  have  observed  a  benevolent  neutrality.  Whence  came 
such  confidence  in  that  shrewd  old  general  ?  We  know  by  the 
messages  he  had  sent  to  James  from  Alnwick  and  Wooler 
that  he  was  zealous  for  battle,  though  he  had  tried  to  taunt 
the  king  into  coming  down  from  his  hill  "more  like  a 
fortress,"  and  engaging  on  more  equal  and  convenient 
ground.  He  had  a  grudge  against  James,  and  his  soldiers 
were  probably  fired  with  resentment  against  the  Scots  for 
their  untimely  invasion. 

On  the  extreme  English  right  Surrey  had  planted  his 
younger  son,  Edmund  Howard,  with  three  thousand  men, 
Stanley  vassals,  who  objected  strongly  to  serving  under  a 
banner  between  which  and  their  own  there  was  no  good  feeling. 
Next  came  the  Admiral  Howard,  with  about  nine  thousand 
2  c 


386     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

Northumberland,  Durham,  and  Yorkshire  men.  In  the  rear  of 
these  two  columns  was  Dacre,  with  a  thousand  horse  from  Gils- 
land  and  Alston  Moor,  and  two  thousand  foot  from  Bamburgh 
and  Tynemouth.  In  the  centre,  immediately  opposite  the 
Scottish  king,  was  Sir  Marmaduke  Constable,  and  near  a  dozen 
of  his  name,  with  some  three  thousand  Northumbrians  and 
Yorkshire  men,  and  Surrey  himself,  with  five  thousand  more, 
variously  composed.  These  two  columns  probably  covered 
the  ground  between  the  little  village  church,  still  there  in 
restored  form,  and  the  eastern  end  of  the  village.  To  the 
east  of  this,  again,  and  forming  the  left  wing,  were  five 
thousand  more  Lancashire  and  Cheshire  men,  mainly  archers, 
under  their  leader,  Sir  Edward  Stanley.  They  were  con- 
fronted on  the  hilltop  by  the  ten  thousand  Highlanders 
already  spoken  of  as  composing  the  Scottish  right.  It  must 
have  been  nearly  five  o'clock  when  the  battle  opened  by  a 
furious  charge  of  Home's  Borderers  and  Highlanders  on 
Edmund  Howard's  weak  column.  The  ridge  was  higher  at 
this  point,  and  steeper,  terminating,  however,  in  a  broad  level. 
Here  was  the  first  shock  of  arms,  many  traces  of  which  have 
been  unearthed,  the  first  advantage  falling  to  the  Scots. 
Edmund  Howard's  column  was  beaten  back  ;  but  Dacre  and 
his  horse,  the  only  cavalry  apparently  on  the  field,  came  to 
the  rescue,  and  permanently  checked  any  further  advantage. 
Young  Howard  himself,  after  much  desperate  fighting,  found 
his  way  apparently  to  his  brother's  victorious  column  on  the 
left.  Home's  strong  and  practically  successful  division  did 
nothing  more,  and  constitute  an  important  and  abiding 
mystery  of  Flodden  field.  The  fighting  of  this  western  wing 
with  its  opponents  would  almost  certainly  have  been  con- 
cealed from  the  main  battle  by  the  falling  away  of  the  breast 
of  Branxton  ridge  and  the  low,  intervening  ridge  of  Piper's 
Hill.  Though  not  half  a  mile  from  the  most  desperate  and 
critical  meUe  in  Anglo-Scottish  warfare,  they  took  no  further 
part,  for  which  there  are  only  two  explanations  :  either  Home 
could  not  see  what  was  going  forward,  and  having  apparently 
done  his  part  was  sufficiently  embarrassed  by  Dacre's 


FLODDEN   FIELD  387 

i 

vigorous  horsemen  to  keep  him  still  occupied  till  dark,  or 
else  that  his  men,  being  Borderers  and  Highlanders,  satisfied 
with  their  successful  attack,  scattered  to  plunder  the  dead, 
which  were  fairly  numerous.  At  any  rate,  eight  or  ten 
thousand  first-class  troops  remained  out  of  the  fight,  and  why 
they  did  so  is  still  a  puzzle  to  the  historian.  Home's 
patriotism  was  not  seriously  called  in  question,  though  when 
the  scapegoat,  quite  inevitable  to  such  a  great  disaster,  was 
called  for,  he  did  good  service  in  many  quarters.  In  the 
mean  time,  the  Admiral  Howard  had  scattered  Crawford's 
column,  himself  calling  loudly  on  the  king,  and  hurling  back 
the  taunts  that  James  had  flung  at  him  of  skulking  on  the  high 
seas.  "  Those  who  boasted  of  having  sought  me  everywhere, 
where  are  they  now  ? "  he  shouted.  Crawford  answered  the 
challenge  for  his  king,  and  the  two  fought  with  axes  till  the 
Scottish  earl  was  slain.  The  Earl  of  Rothes,  rushing  to  the 
rescue,  fell  at  the  hands  of  the  two  Percies,  who  were  at 
Howard's  side.  There  were  eight  French  captains,  too,  with 
this  division,  all  of  whom  fell.  King  James,  from  the  top  of 
Branxton  ridge,  fired  by  the  spectacle  either  of  Home's  more 
distant  success  or  the  other's  nearer  failure,  prepared  to  lead 
his  own  division  into  the  fight  with  the  undue  haste  as  a  cap- 
tain, and  reckless  ardour  as  a  soldier,  for  which  he  was  noted. 
Descending  from  his  horse,  pulling  off  his  boots,  grasping 
a  spear  and  shield,  surrounded  by  a  group  of  his  nobles,  who 
did  likewise,  and  followed  by  his  whole  division,  he  bore  down 
impetuously  on  Surrey's  central  columns.  From  Branxton 
ridge  the  main  battlefield  looks  to  the  casual  eye  like  a 
continuous  downward  slope  to  the  village,  and  it  is  thus 
always  described.  I  have  done  so  here  myself,  as  a  matter 
of  fact ;  but  just  short  of  the  spot  where  the  English  centre 
would  naturally  have  been  extended,  it  is  crossed  by  a  wide 
trough-like  depression,  beyond  which  a  descending  army  at 
the  charge  would  find  their  impetus  entirely  checked  by  an 
upward  slope  of  fifty  to  a  hundred  yards.  Along  the  ridge 
of  this  it  seems  more  than  probable  that  the  English  centre 
must  have  awaited  the  king's  attack,  and  whatever  slight 


388     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

advantage  a  slope  might  give  to  foot  soldiers  was,  in  fact,  at 
this  point  theirs,  and  not  the  Scots'.  Moreover,  the  English 
guns  seem  to  have  played  on  these  advancing  columns  with 
some  effect ;  with  more,  at  any  rate,  than  those  of  the  Scots, 
which,  though  somewhat  historic  weapons,  and  quite  numerous, 
did  very  little  damage,  possibly  from  the  fact  of  being  fired 
downhill.  Then  began  that  tremendous  hand-to-hand  conflict, 
which  till  another  element  came  in  was  as  doubtful  as  it  was 
fierce.  This  other  element  was  Surrey's  left  wing.  Stanley 
and  his  five  thousand  archers  composing  this,  away  to  the 
east  of  the  present  village,  like  King  James  and  his  friends, 
pulling  off  their  shoes  to  get  a  firmer  hold  on  the  slippery 
soil,  seem  to  have  moved  up  the  hill  to  meet  their  immediate 
opponents,  the  ten  thousand  Highlanders  of  Argyle  and 
Lennox.  This  force,  heterogeneous  and  undisciplined,  pro- 
bably ill-protected,  and  certainly  unaccustomed  to  face  the 
best  archers  in  Europe,  were  stung  to  madness  by  the  whist- 
ling arrow  flights.  Breaking  their  ranks  in  futile  and  spas- 
modic efforts  to  close  with  their  enemy,  they  were  easily  shot 
down,  and  in  due  course  driven  up  the  hill  in  rout  and  over 
it,  to  scatter  and  be  seen  no  more  so  far  as  the  battle  was 
concerned,  leaving  their  leaders  dead  upon  the  field.  Having 
thus  turned  the  Scottish  position  and  gained  the  ridge, 
Stanley,  while  his  victorious  men  were  getting  their  breath, 
could  look  back  at  the  main  battle  in  furious  progress  towards 
the  foot  of  the  slope  below.  Wheeling  round  and  charging 
down  and  across  the  hill,  with  his  force  practically  unimpaired, 
he  struck  the  Scots  engaged  in  their  equal  and  not  unhopeful 
strife  on  flank  and  rear.  Whatever  the  latter's  numerical 
majority  at  the  opening  of  the  battle,  the  odds  were  now 
much  against  them.  Their  right  wing  had  fled  bodily  ;  their 
left,  of  much  more  value,  had  dropped  mysteriously  out  of 
the  fight.  Crawford's  broken  column  may  have  rallied  in 
part,  no  doubt,  but  inevitably  thinned  in  that  temptation  to 
fight  which  the  near  neighbourhood  of  Scotland  must  have 
offered,  and  the  prospective  difficulties  which  the  crossing  of 
a  swollen  Tweed  at  the  spear's  point  involved.  The  breaking 


FLODDEN   FIELD  389 

of  this  fresh  wave  of  men  upon  the  Scottish  column,  perhaps 
about  sunset,  was  the  beginning  of  the  end.  Every  man 
of  the  English  army,  unless  the  mysterious  Home  beyond 
Piper's  Hill  was,  in  truth,  occupying  any  of  them,  was  now 
engaged  in  the  main  battle.  Yet,  even  so,  it  is  not  easy  to 
account  for  odds  much  greater  than  three  to  two.  But  the 
Scots,  beyond  doubt,  were  more  or  less  enveloped.  Stanley's 
archers,  falling  on  their  flank  and  rear,  had  them  at  a  great 
advantage ;  and  Dacre's  horse,  too,  are  described  in  most 
accounts  as  joining  later  in  the  fray.  At  any  rate,  till  dark 
closed  the  scene,  its  unparalleled  frenzy  was  of  a  kind  that 
burnt  itself  into  the  imagination  and  memories  of  a  genera- 
tion well  hardened  to  blood  and  slaughter.  The  Scots  after 
Stanley's  charge  seem  always  to  have  been  fighting  a  hope- 
less battle  round  their  king ;  but  there  was  no  thought  of 
flight,  nor,  indeed,  of  surrender,  for  no  quarter  was  offered, 
and  the  question  of  ransom,  which  should  here  have  yielded 
a  golden  harvest,  was  forgotten  by  the  churls  and  yeomen, 
whose  bills  played  dreadful  havoc  and  made  ghastly  wounds. 

11  But  yet  though  thick  the  shafts  as  snow, 
Though  charging  knights  like  whirlwinds  go, 
Though  bill-men  ply  the  ghastly  blow, 
Unbroken  was  the  ring. 

No  thought  was  there  of  dastard  flight, 

Linked  in  the  serried  phalanx  tight; 

Groom  fought  like  noble,  squire  like  knight, 

As  fearlessly  and  well, 

Till  utter  darkness  closed  her  wing 

O'er  their  thin  host  and  wounded  king." 

Night  alone,  as  Scott  says,  put  an  end  to  the  carnage, 
when  the  survivors  of  the  decimated  column  vanished  into 
the  darkness,  and  in  scattered  bands,  beaten,  but  not 
disgraced,  followed  the  various  paths  towards  Scotland,  that 
so  many  of  their  countrymen,  of  whom  as  much  could  not 
be  said,  had  already  taken  in  the  daylight.  The  exhausted 
English  camped  where  they  had  fought.  The  only  sign  of  a 
living  or  an  unwounded  Scotsman  next  morning  was  Home's 
ever-mysterious  column,  who  might  conceivably  have  turned 


390     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 

Flodden  into  a  Bannockburn,  hovering  for  a  short  time  at 
the  western  edge  of  the  late  battlefield,  where  they  had  spent 
the  night.  "  If  we  had  only  an  hour  more  of  daylight,"  said 
the  English  soldiers,  "  we  should  have  given  the  Scots  such  a 
lesson  that  they  would  have  been  ware  how  they  entered  the 
realm  of  England  again."  Forty  of  the  victors  were  knighted 
by  Surrey  on  the  field.  Never  in  history,  probably,  have 
Englishmen  fought  better. 

The  spectacle  presented,  however,  next  morning  must 
have  satisfied  even  the  most  sanguinary  Northumbrian.  The 
loss  of  the  Scots,  taking  an  average  of  estimates,  may  be  put 
at  eight  thousand.  Probably  more  than  half  of  these  fell  in 
the  last  great  carnage,  the  centre  of  which,  as  also  roughly 
marking  King  James'  fall,  is  generally  held  to  be  the  spot 
occupied  by  the  present  vicarage.*  The  bodies  of  the  slain, 
according  to  custom,  had  been  quickly  stripped,  and  when  the 
king  was  found  late  in  the  day  with  an  arrow  wound  in  his 
forehead,  several  gashes  from  bills  on  his  body,  and  naked 
as  the  rest,  he  was  identified  by  Dacre,  who  had  seen  him  in 
life  more  than  once.  Great  numbers  of  Highlanders  had 
been  slain  on  the  English  left  by  Stanley's  archers.  Very 
few,  indeed,  of  the  Caithness  men  returned  to  the  north,  and 
for  generations  it  was  there  considered  unlucky  to  go  to  war 
in  green,  the  colour  in  which  they  fought  that  day. 

But  the  wail  that  went  up  for  Flodden,  from  one  end  of 
Scotland  to  the  other,  has  always  been  a  sounding  note  in 
Scottish  history,  not  so  much  for  the  mere  numbers  left  dead 
on  the  field,  but  for  the  havoc  wrought  in  famous  houses. 
Every  family  of  note  lost  one  or  more  members.  "  I  never 
read,"  says  Lindsay,  "  in  tragidie  nor  story  at  ane  jounaye 
so  many  nobles  slain  for  the  defense  and  life  of  their 
soverane." 

The  king's  natural  son,  a  short-sighted,  studious  youth, 
and  bishop  of  St.  Andrews,  fell  at  his  side.  Besides  these, 
one  bishop,  ten  mitred  abbots,  twelve  earls,  fourteen  lords, 
and  a  proportionate  number  of  private  gentlemen  lost  their 

*  Some  say  Piper's  Hill. 


FLODDEN   FIELD  391 

lives.  It  has  been  a  trite  saying  among  Scottish  writers 
that  Flodden  threw  Scotland  back  a  hundred  years  or  more. 
Under  James  the  Fourth  she  had  made  marked  strides  in 
importance  as  a  nation,  and  prosperity  as  a  people,  and  the 
loss  of  so  many  of  her  natural  leaders  was  a  disastrous  blow. 
The  death  of  the  king  still  more  so,  as  it  entailed  a  long 
minority,  which,  in  ancient  Scotland,  always  spelled  chaos, 
while  the  bitterness  of  so  overwhelming  a  defeat  without 
any  extenuating  cause  bit  deep  into  the  national  pride. 

Posterity,  however,  has  treasured  rather  the  gallantry  of 
the  final  stand  and  the  tragic  pathos  of  the  whole  business. 
The  well-known  and  beautiful  ballad,  "The  flowers  of  the 
forest,"  was  not  composed  in  praise  of  bluebells  or  wood 
anemones,  as  thousands  of  its  southerners,  familiar  only  with 
its  air  or  title,  no  doubt  have  lived  and  died  in  the  belief,  but 
of  the  young  men  of  Ettrick  forest  who  fell  at  Flodden. 
Written  in  the  eighteenth  century  by  a  lady  of  the  Elliot 
family,  as  a  lament  on  the  battle,  with  such  skilful  imitation 
of  the  ancient  manner  as  quite  to  impose  on  Scott,  it  has 
been  thought  to  enclose  the  germs  of  some  genuinely  ancient 
wail.  The  hungry  and  exhausted  English  army  scattered  to 
their  various  homes  immediately  after  the  battle  of  Flodden, 
or  Branxton  Moor,  as  at  the  time  it  was  often  and  more 
correctly  called,  with  appetites  only  sharpened,  perhaps,  by 
the  abundance  of  beer  that  they  found  in  the  Scottish  camp. 
The  king's  body  was  sent  by  Dacre  to  Surrey,  at  Berwick, 
and  embalmed.  As  breaker  of  the  truce  between  England 
and  Scotland,  James  had  died  an  excommunicate  under  the 
Pope's  decree,  and  the  rites  of  Christian  burial  were,  for  this 
reason,  and  somewhat  ungenerously  under  the  circumstances, 
refused  by  Surrey.  The  corpse  was  sent  south  to  the  Monas- 
tery of  Sheen,  where  it  lay  wrapped  in  a  sheet  of  lead  till  the 
Reformation,  when  the  place  passed  into  the  hands  of  the 
Duke  of  Suffolk.  After  this  it  was  tossed  about  the  house 
like  a  piece  of  useless  lumber,  according  to  Stow,  the  historian, 
who  saw  it  himself  lying  about  among  a  litter  of  rubbish. 
"  Some  idle  workmen  for  their  foolish  pleasure,"  he  tells  us, 


392     THE   ROMANCE   OF  NORTHUMBERLAND 

"hewed  off  the  head,  and  Lancelot  Young,  master  grazier  to 
Queen  Elizabeth,  finding  a  sweet  smell,  due  no  doubt  to  the 
spices  with  which  it  had  been  embalmed,  issuing  therefrom, 
took  it  home  with  him,  but  ultimately  caused  it  to  be  buried 
in  the  charnel  house  of  St.  Michael's  Wood  Street." 

Such  was  the  end  of  one  of  the  proudest  and  most 
popular  of  Scottish  kings,  and  such  was  Flodden.  The  tradi- 
tional view  of  it,  shared  to  the  full  by  Scott,  as  crushing  for 
a  time  the  very  spirit  of  the  nation,  has  been  somewhat 
modified  of  late  by  recent  writers.  The  further  invasions  of 
Scotland  on  a  large  scale,  which  occurred  throughout  the 
century,  destructive  as  they  were,  were  met  with  spirit  if 
not  always  with  success  by  that  distracted  country.  Their 
ravage  has  been  often  held  without  justification  as  an  after- 
math of  Flodden,  and  loosely  associated  with  that  ghastly 
catastrophe.  But  in  the  case  of  the  Borderers,  whom  popular 
imagination  has  been  taught  to  regard  as  the  greatest 
sufferers  by  Flodden,  they  have  been  shown,  by  a  recent 
Border  writer,  to  have  been  the  least  injured  of  any  of  the 
contributories  to  James'  army.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  they 
were  nearly  all  in  Home's  division,  which  suffered  little 
and  was  never  broken,  the  conclusion  seems  an  obviously 
just  one. 

The  English  versifiers  were  busy  after  the  great  victory. 
Two  well-known  ballads  are  extant,  that  of  "  Flodden  Field," 
by  a  retainer  of  the  Stanleys,  being  very  lengthy  and  full 
of  personal  detail,  and  revelling  in  quaint  and  resounding 
crashes  of  alliteration.  There  is  also  a  contemporary  Italian 
account  written  immediately  on  the  receipt  of  the  news. 

Such  few  visitors  as  now  turn  their  steps  to  Flodden  Field 
seem  to  find  their  inspiration  more  in  Lord  Marmion  than  in 
James  the  Fourth  or  Surrey,  in  Dacre  or  Stanley.  The 
Sybil's  well,  from  which  the  dying  lips  of  that  fine  creation 
of  Scott's  fancy  were  laved,  still  bubbles  up  at  the  roadside 
beneath  the  little  church  at  Branxton,  around  which  numbers 
of  the  slain  must  have  found  their  nameless  graves.  Thanks 
to  the  well-meant  but  ill-directed  enthusiasm  of  a  former  lady 


FLODDEN   FIELD  393 

of  Ford  Castle,  the  less  critical  wanderer  is  beguiled  away  to  a 
modern  Sybil's  well,  walled  in  and  inscribed  with  Scott's  well- 
known  triplet,  near  the  crest  of  Flodden  Edge,  a  mile  in  the 
rear  of  the  Scottish  line  of  battle,  and  much  more  than  that 
from  the  original  spring  where  Sir  Walter  quite  accurately 
laid  out  his  dying  hero.  The  latter,  it  will  be  remembered, 
fell  in  the  younger  Howard's  early  efforts  to  stem  the  first 
charge  of  Home  and  Huntley ;  and  here,  on  the  high  bank 
near  by  the  little  church,  and  just  above  the  roadside  well, 
one  may  forget  for  a  brief  moment  the  enthralling  realities  of 
the  living  past  in  a  spot  that,  despite  its  almost  protesting 
air  of  rural  in  consequence  and  rural  isolation,  is  indelibly 
associated  with  those  world-famous  lines  that  close  the  death 
scene  in  Scott's  immortal  poem — 

"  A  light  on  Marmion's  visage  spread 
And  fired  his  glazing  eye, 
With  dying  hand  above  his  head, 
He  shook  the  fragment  of  his  blade, 
And  shouted  victory. 

'  Charge,  Chester,  charge  !  On,  Stanley,  on  ! ' 
Were  the  last  words  of  Marmion." 


INDEX 


Adderstone  Hall,  82,  106 

yEsica,  248 

Agricola,  221,  248 

Aidan,  St.,  lo,  n,  102,  107,  119 

Akeld,  346,  353 

Akenside,  212 

Alexander  I.,  138 

Alexander  II.,  155 

Allendale,  250 

Allen  River,  257 

Allen,  West,  The,  271,  272 

Aln  River,  8,  9,  14,  338,  340 

Alnmouth,  14,  45 

Alnwick,  9,  14-36,  381 

Alnwick  Abbey,  33 

Alnwick  Church,  31 

Alston,  273 

Alwen  River,  336 

Ancroft,  130 

Antoninus  Pius,  223 

Argyle,  Earl  of,  384,  388 

Armstrong,  Lord,  99,  106,  331 

Armstrong  clan,  262,  263 

Arthur,  King,  245 

Aulus  Plantius,  220 

Aydon  Hall,  203-205 


B 


Ballister,  266 

Bamburgh,  9,  10,  12,  46,  74,  90,  99, 

Bardon  Mill,  233,  247,  249 

Barmoor,  382 

Barton,  Andrew,  65,  378 


Bates,  The  historian,  205,  345 
Batinghope,  318 
Beadnell  burn,  74 
Beal,  115 
Beaufront,  200 
Bebber,  101 

Bede,  The  Venerable,  n,  161 
Belford,  69,  115 
Bell  burn,  303 
Bellingham,  282 
Bellingham  de,  279 
Bernicia,  10 
Bertram,  42,  43 
Berwick,  8,  9,  69,  125-147 
Berwickshire,  78 
Besant,  Sir  W.,  177 
Bewcastle,  14,  308,  381 
Bewick,  88,  166 
Biddlestone,  336 
Birdhope  Crag,  316 
Blackett  Ords,  The,  271 
Black  Fell,  303 
Blanchland,  177-187 
Blenkinsopp,  266 
Borcovicus.     See  Housteads 
Bosanquets,  The,  71 
Boulmer,  63 
Bowes,  Sir  R.,  287 
Bowmont  River,  360 
Bradley  Hall,  241 
Branxton,  383-393 
Breamish  River,  91 
Bredon,  John,  54 
158      Bremenium,  320 

Brinkburn  Abbey,  332 
Broomlee  lough,  246 
Bruce,  David,  103,  247 
395 


396     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 


Bruce,  Robert,  202,  243,  244 

Budle,  112 

Bulmer,  William,  381 

Busy  Gap,  236 

Byrness,  323,  324 


Caesar,  Julius,  220 
Callaley,  338 
Camden,  236 
Carey,  Sir  R.,  264-266 
Carmichael,  327 
Carnabys,  The,  263 
Carpenter,  General,  192,  193 
Cat  Stairs,  247 
Catcleugh,  325 
Cattlehope  Spout,  295 
Cawfields,  248 
Ceolwulph,  King,  161 
Chapman,  Abel,  244,  280,  325 
Charles  I.,  5,  6 
Charlton,  north,  69 
Charlton,  south,  91 
Charlton  (of  Lee  Hall),  259 
Charlton,  Dr.,  270 
Charltons,  The,  279,  293,  300 
Charlton,  Bowrie,  285 
Charlton  House,  294 
Chatton,  85,  356 
Chatton  Moor,  82 
Chesters,  217-232 
Cheviot,  The  Big,  358-374 
Cheviots,  The,  8,  9,  32,  341-374 
Childe  Wynd,  113 
Chillingham,  84-89,  379 
Chinely  burn,  218 
Chipchase,  277 
Chirdon  burn,  297-299 
Chollerford,  214,  216,  219,  232 
Christon  Bank,  46,  71 
Claudius,  Emperor,  226 
Claverings,  The,  338 
Clayton,  John,  219,  235 
Clennels,  The,  336 
Cocklaw,  214 


College  burn,  353,  360,  361 

Collingwood,  Henry,  328,  366 

Comyn,  Red,  294 

Constable,  Sir  Marmaduke,  386 

Coquet  River,  8,  9,  331-335 

Corbit  Jack,  294 

Corbridge,  102,  176,  200-203 

Corstopitum,  201 

Coupland  Castle,  351,  379 

Cowt  of  Kielder,  304 

Crag  Lough,  244,  247 

Craster,  61-63 

Crawford,  Earl  of,  384,  387,  388 

Creighton,  Bishop,  55 

Crew,  Lord,  104,  184 

Crookham,  383 

Crossman,  117 

Croziers,  The,  318 

Cullernose,  63 

Cunedda,  238 

Cuthbert,  St.,  II,  102,  107,  119,  153 


D 

Dacre,  288,  289,  381,  386,  390 

Dally  Castle,  298 

Darling,  Grace,  108-110 

Deadwater,  303 

De  Foe,  370,  371 

Deira,  10 

Dene  Peter,  53,  59 

Derwent water,  Earl  of,  180-196 

Derwentwater,  Lady,  190,  194 

Derwentwater  claimant,  196-198 

Derwent  River,  182,  183 

Devilswater,  178-180,  188,  191 

Dilston,  178,  188-191 

Dipton,  179,  180,  191 

Doddington,  356,  382 

Dodgson,  315 

Douglas,  Archibald,  345,  382 

Douglas,  The  black,  309-314 

Duddo,  352,  379 

Dunstanburgh,  25 

Duns  Scotus,  53 

Durham,  Bishop, 


INDEX 


397 


Edward  I.,  139,    140-143,    161,   202, 

242 

Edward  II.,  144 
Edward  III.,  53,  144,  184 
Edwin,  King,  352 
Eglingham,  91 
Elfwald,  King,  172 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  6,  29,  30 
Elsdon,  315 
Embleton,  46 
Errington,  Lancelot,  122 
Errington  of  Beaufront,  191,  279 
Etheldreda,  176 
Ethelfrid,  10 
Eslington,  339 
Etal,  352,  379 
Ewart,  352,  356 


Falloden,  71 
Falstone,  296,  301 
Fame  Islands,  107 
Featherstonehaugh,  258 
Felton  bridge,  327 
Fenwick  of  Rock,  72 
Fen  wick,  Sir  John,  179 
Fenwick  of  Wallington,  289 
Fenwicks,  The,  327 
Fitzjohn,  Eustace,  33 
Flambard,  Bishop,  161 
Flodden  Edge,  343,  356 
Flodden  Field,  373~393 
Ford  Castle,  352,  379,  393 
Forster,  Dorothy,  82,  186 
Forster,  Ferdinando,  73 
Forster,  Lady  Crew,  105 
Forster  Monuments,  ill 
Forster,  Sir  John,  326 
Forster,  Thomas,  105,  192,  194 
Forsters,  The,  184 
Freeman,  E.  A.,  58,  60,  100 
Froissart,  311,  313,  314 


Galoun,  Thomas,  52,  54,  59 
Gaunt,  John  of,  19,  59,  60 
George  I.,  192 
Gibson,  Wilfrid,  213 
Glen  River,  351,  352,  354 
Gospatrick,  161 
Gosse,  John,  60 
Greenhead,  249 
Greenrigg,  192 
Grey,  Charles,  195,  196 
Grey,  Sir  E.,  71 
Grey,  Sir  Ralph,  89,  179 
Grey,  Sir  Thomas,  156,  157 
Greys,  of  Falloden,  50 
Greystock,  301 
Guinevere,  245 


H 

Hadrian,  221-224,  249 
Haggerstone,  115 
Halidon  Hill,  145,  351 
Hall,  John,  207,  208,  316 
Halls,  The,  318,  325 
Halton  Tower,  205,  206 
Haltwhistle,  233,  249,  263,  266 
Harbottle,  71,  288,  336 
Hareshaw  burn,  283 
Haughton  Castle,  276 
Haydon  Bridge,  233,  251,  252 
Heaven  field,  214 
Hedgehope,  367,  371,  373 
Hedgeley,  25,  340,  341 
Hedley,  248 

Henhole,  The,  362,  363,  365 
Henry  II.,  5,  13,  136,  137,  256 
Henry  III.,  5,  44 
Henry  IV.,  257,  343,  349 
Henry  VI.,  104,  157 
Henry  VIII.,  289,  378 
Herons  family,  277,  289,  378,  381 
Hesley  Side,  293 
Hexham,  10,  II,  165-289 
Hodgson,  205,  223,  241 


398     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 


Hollinshead,  313 

Holy  Island,  74,  115-124 

Home,  Lord,  384-386 

Horsley,  320 

Hot  Bank,  244,  247,  248 

Hotspur,  23,  24,  309-314.  345-349 

Housteads,  236-240 

Houxtys,  280 

Howards,  The,  381,  385-387,  393 

Howick,  63 

Hulne  Abbey,  33,  34 

Hulne  Park,  32-35 

Humbleton  Hill,  344 

Hunnums,  206,  214 

Huntley,  Lord,  384 

Hussa,  101 


Ida,  10,  101 


James  III.,  157 

James  IV.,  65,  158,  162,  378-393 

James  V.,  289 

John,  King,  138,  155 


Katherine,  Queen,  380 
Kenmure,  Lord,  192,  193 
Kerr  of  Ferryhurst,  328 
Kielder,  302-304 
Kirknewton,  354,  359,  365 
Kyloe  hills,  353 


Ladykirk,  162 

Lancaster,  Edward  of,  48,  52 

Lancaster,  Henry  of,  59 

Lancaster,  Thomas  of,  48,  52,  59 

Landseer,  81 

Lammermuir,  112,  121,  373 


Langleeford,  367,  371,  373 
Langley  Castle,  255-257 
Lennox,  384,  388 
Lesbury,  64 
Lewis  burn,  301 
Leyden,  John,  212,  375 
Lilburn  tower,  341 
Lindisferne,  117-120,  170 
Linnels  bridge,  178,  186 
Lollius  Urbicus,  223 
Long  Haughton,  64 
Lothian,  East,  76-79 
Louvain,  Josceline  de,  19 
Lowes,  259 
Lucys,  The,  257 
Lundie,  313 


M 


Macaulay,  Lord,  287 
Mackintosh,  192 
Malcolm,  King,  12 
Mangerton,  305 
|   Mar,  Lord,  192 
March,  Earl  of,  341 
Margaret,  Queen,  57,  104,  152,  179 
Marmion,  Lord,  152,  153 
Marmion,  Sir  W.,  156 
Mars  Thingsus,  239 
Merton  College,  52-55 
Middleton,  367,  373 
Milburnes,  The,  294 
Millfield  Marsh,  344,  351 
Mithras,  239 
Montfort,  de,  33 
Montgomery,  Sir  H.,  314 
Montrose,  384 
Moorcock  inn,  301 
Monncey,  301 
Mowbray,  103 


Nevilles,  The,  183 
Newbiggin,  191 


INDEX 


399 


Newcastle,  1-7 
Newton,  68 

Norham  Castle,  152-158 
Norham  church,  161,  379 
Norham  village,  158-161 
North,  Sir  Francis,  275 
Northumberland,  Duke  of,  31 
Northumbria,  10-13 


O 

Oswald,  King,  10,  102,  119,  214 
Ostorius,  220 
Otterburn,  309-317 
Ovingham,  166 


Pattern,  192 

Paul,  St.,  351 

Paulinus,  352 

Peel  Fell,  303 

Penda,  102 

Percy,  Bishop,  41,  42 

Percy's  Cross,  317 

Percy,  The  House  of,  18-31,  36-42 

Percy,  Sir  Ralph,  25,  60,  104 

Piper's  Hill,  386,  389 

Plashetts,  302 

Preston,  battle  of,  193 

Procolita,  232 

Proctor  Steads,  63 

Pudsey,  Bishop,  155 


Radcliffe,  Chas.,  193,  194 
Radclifie,  Sir  F.,  190 
Ravensworth,  339 
Redesdale,  307-329 
Redesweir,  325-328 
Reed,  Percy,  318-320 
Richard  I.,  138 


Richard  III.,  6 

Richard  of  Hexham,  174 

Riding  Mill,  188 

Ridley  family,  257-259,  264 

Ridley,  Bishop  of,  258 

Ridley  Hall,  257 

Rising  of  the 'fifteen,  192-195 

Robsons,  The,  300-323 

Rochester,  320 

Rock,  71 

Roman  Wall,  217-249 

Rookhope  Ride,  252 

Ros  Castle,  84-91 

Rothbury,  33i~335 

Russell,  329 


Salkeld,  72 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  152,  153,  176,  259, 

319.  359.  369.  370,  392 
Sea  Houses,  95,  96 
Selbys,  The,  82,  336 
Severus,  176,  222,  223 
Sewingshields,  233,  295 
Sharp,  Archdeacon,  106 
Shotley  Bridge,  187 
Sinclair,  313 
Slaley,  81,  180 
Smith,  Captain,  123 
Smithson,  Sir  Hugh,  30 
Somerset,  Duke  of,  168 
Somerset,  Protector,  28 
Soulis,  305 

Spindleston  Heugh,  112 
Spittal,  130 
St.  Abbs'  Head,  121 
Stagshaw  bank,  206,  214 
Stanegate,  202,  242,  249 
Stanley,  Sir  E.,  386-389 
Staward,  267 
Steelrigg,  247 
Stokoe,  260,  261 
Sunderland,  North,  95,  108 
Surrey,  Earl  of,  289,  378-393 
Surtees,  181,  258 


400     THE   ROMANCE   OF   NORTHUMBERLAND 


Swinburne,  277,  279,  301,  340 
Swinhoe,  96 


Tacitus,  221,  234 

Tankerville,  85,  87 

Tarras  Moss,  265 

Tarset  tower,  289,  290 

Tarset  burn,  294 

Thirlwall,  Nicks  of,  248 

Thomson,  55 

Till    River,  8,  85,  90,  343,  354-356, 

379-385 

Troughend,  316-320 
Tudor,  Lady  M.,  190 
Tuggall,  96 
Tunstall,  379 
Tweed  River,  136-152 
Tweedmouth,  136 
Twizell  house,  82 
Twizell  bridge,  357,  383 
Tyne,  The,   1-7,  165,  166,  188,  201, 

202 

Tyne,  North,  214-219,  275-307 
Tyne,  South,  215,  251-254,  263 
Tynemouth,  214 


U 

Umfravilles,  The,  334 
Urien,  101 


Vallum,  The,  210,  214 
Vesci  de,  33,  48 


Vespasian,  220 
Vindolana,  248 


W 


Wade's  road,  210,  213,  252 

Walkington,  55 

Wansbeck,  The,  8,  9 

Wark-on-Tyne,  276,  278,  379 

Warkworth,  9,  36-41,  373 

Waterford,  379 

Watling  Street,  201,  214,  309,  320 

Warwick,  Earl  of,  60,  157 

Weldon  Bridge,  332 

Wetwangs,  The,  63 

Whinshields,  247 

Whitfield,  271 

Whittadder,  151 

Whitton,  334 

Whittingham,  338 

Wickhope  burn,  301 

Widdringtons,  The,  42,  43,  207,  286 

Wigan,  General,  193 

Wilfrid,  St.,  II,  102,  169,  171 

William  I.,  12,  103 

William  II.,  4,  12 

William  the  Lion,  137,  138,  256 

Willimoteswyke,  257-259 

Wolsey,  26,  27,  no 

Woodburn,  192 

Wooler,  164,  343,  367 


Yavering,  350-353 
Yetholm,  359 


PRINTED   BY   WILLIAM   CLOWES    AND   SONS,    LIMITED,    LONDON    AND    BECCLKS. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000734318     9 


